


Only Human

by callowyn, thegeminisage



Series: Cambionverse [4]
Category: Supernatural, Supernatural: The Next Generation - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Genie/Djinn, Dreams and Nightmares, Families of Choice, Hallucinations, M/M, Team Free Will 2.0
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-26
Updated: 2015-01-19
Packaged: 2017-11-10 16:51:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 46,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/468532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callowyn/pseuds/callowyn, https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegeminisage/pseuds/thegeminisage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Now that Ben’s three-year quest to find Dean has finally ended, he sort of figured his life would settle down. But ever since Jesse’s battle with the Queen of Hell, it’s become more dangerous than ever to be the Antichrist’s friend, and Dean seems determined to use his newly-reinstated role as Ben’s father figure to disapprove of all of Ben’s life choices. Worse, now that the Winchesters are back in business, an old enemy with a bone to pick aims to put them down permanently—no matter who gets hurt in the process. Compared to an angel’s ex-vessel, a cambion, and the most legendary hunter in living memory, not much seems special about Ben. But he may be the only one able to keep his family, new and old, from being destroyed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part I

**Author's Note:**

> At long last, the redux of _Only Human_ has arrived! We know it's been a long wait, so just a quick note for our (only barely spoilery) warnings—if you read the original _Only Human_ , they're no different this time around.
> 
>  **This fic contains significant violence, graphic descriptions of severe burns, death by fire, a non-fatal car accident, brief discussions of terminal illness, allusions to torture and its emotional aftermath, and multiple instances of characters being supernaturally drugged to unconsciousness or unpleasant hallucinatory states (because djinn). While one instance of drugging occurs in the context of a semi-anonymous hookup, this fic does not include rape or threat of sexual violence. (Some clothed heavy petting is as far as sex stuff gets in this particular fic, and all of it is consensual.) There is also depiction of a fake suicide (dying in a dream to escape the dream).** If any of this stuff could be tricky for you, please read with caution or consider skipping this fic! If you have any questions or want any details, feel totally free to [drop us a line](http://cambionverse.tumblr.com/ask) and we will be happy to clarify.
> 
> With that out of the way, go forth and enjoy the fic! It's been a long time coming. We truly hope it's worth the wait.

On a sticky June night in Philadelphia, an old gray van pulls over in the shadowy domain of a dead streetlight, followed by three cars in varying states of disrepair. Though the rest of the city buzzes with life, these cars have chosen to park beneath towers dark and empty against the night sky, its brick faces clinging to the worn-down glamor of an earlier age. Trash bags billow through the broken glass of its high, arched windows, an echo of the fine curtains that once hung there. Some of the graffiti covering the lower walls has been there so long that it too has chipped away with time.

Quickly and quietly, the cars’ occupants pour out like water, feet crunching on summer-dry grass—all except for two, still crouched in the back of the van. White chalk in hand, one of them finishes drawing a circular symbol on the van’s ceiling, checking it against the piece of paper he holds. "Does that look right to you?" he asks his companion.

She glances over, uncaring. "Close enough."

"'Close enough' could get us killed."

Her laugh is low and humorless. "I don’t intend to die on one of the First’s milk runs. I don’t give a damn about the cambion unless he can find me Dean Winchester."

"Not so loud," he hisses, but the others are too absorbed in their own conversations to have heard. "This isn’t a milk run. The cambion is dangerous, and if anything happened to you—I couldn't—"

Some of the harsh lines in her face soften. "Hey, I’ll be fine. You and me, we survive."

"We survive," he repeats, very seriously. "And that means playing the game. Doing what we’re told. We'll get nowhere without the First's favor, you have to remember that. Everything else comes after, even Dean Winchester." She huffs, but he touches her arm and says, "Promise me. We stick to the plan."

”You just keep the engine running 'til I get back.” She rests her hand over his, briefly. "I'll stick to the plan. Promise."

 

 

* * *

# O N L Y     H U M A N

* * *

 

 

Ben has just finished saying “Well, that’s all taken care of,” when the rickety doors of the Divine Lorraine Hotel burst open again. He curses, sure that the poltergeist somehow managed to undo their hex bags, but no: a full dozen people walk into the once-majestic dining hall, all heavily tattooed, and all instantly focused on Jesse.

“Cambion,” announces a muscular man whose tattoos extend all the way up his bare scalp. Jesse stands up straighter, his hands still slightly upraised from keeping all the chairs and crates and assorted trash pinned down while they fought the poltergeist. Behind his back Claire and Ben exchange a look: _cover him_. Ben readies his flask of holy water.

“Um, look,” says Jesse, and he sounds much more like an ordinary, vaguely Australian twenty-one-year-old than the semi-omnipotent Antichrist he is. “Whatever you’re going to ask of me, I think it’s best for everyone if we could just not.”

Ben, sizing up these new threats, accidentally makes eye contact with a pale curly-haired woman in the back. She starts, then frowns like she recognizes him. That’s not a good sign. Ben keeps his eyes on her, though he can’t remember ever seeing her before in his life.

The man in front ignores all of this, gesturing to the rest of his crew. “Dispose of the others. The First only wants him.”

“Least they don’t take their time about it,” Ben mutters. The lackeys rush forward, and Ben dodges in front of Jesse, flinging holy water right in the first one's growling face.

But the man isn’t a demon; the water rolls off without a single sizzle. Ben swears and fumbles for his gun. The man's tattoos start to writhe and burn blue, and instead of slowing down, he uses his forward momentum to bodyslam Ben to the ground. Wheezing, Ben struggles away from that blue fire, but there's nowhere to go—

Before the man has a chance to touch him, Claire darts forward and stabs him in the back.

“Get silver!” she pants, heaving the body off him. “They’re djinn!” She doesn’t pause to help him up; the next djinn lunges at Jesse, and Claire intercepts her with a deep slice across the midsection.

“Shit,” says Ben, wincing his way to a crouch and grasping for a weapon. He shoots one djinn just to get it to slow down, but he’s not packing silver bullets; he’s hardly been carrying silver at all since he found out Jesse was allergic. Instead he digs out the silver knife in his boot that Dean gave him for his fifteenth birthday. He stands, holding the blade to meet his next attacker, but the djinn all seem focused on getting to Jesse, who’s holding them at bay with...a dining chair.

“Now would be a great time to use those powers we keep hearing about!” Ben yells, wrestling a djinn away from the pack and stabbing him in the throat. Honestly. One little poltergeist wants to throw some rotting crates at Ben and Claire, and suddenly Jesse can control a roomful of heavy objects; when monsters are actively trying to kill him, he decides it’s time to go _mano a mano_.

“You two get out of here!” Jesse shouts back, and the chair shatters in his grip. He tosses the pieces aside. “I’ll deal with them.” His brow furrows, and then the djinn’s leader is thrown twenty feet through the air and smacks against the far wall hard enough to dent it. The rest of the ones circling him draw back, hands all flickering blue, suddenly wary.

“Attaboy,” Ben says under his breath, and stays right where he is.

If someone had told him three months ago that he'd be _encouraging_ a half-demon to use his powers in a fight, Ben would've started rehearsing exorcisms. But it’s thanks to Jesse's powers that Dean and Sam escaped Purgatory, and despite the untold amount of new demonic power that Jesse inherited from the Queen of Hell, Ben owes Jesse his trust. He'll gladly deal with the accidental fires and hours of extra training rather than watch Jesse curl back up into that hunched-over kid he'd been when they met, whose defensive sarcasm was never enough to paper over the whole half of himself that he hated.

However, he does wish Jesse would choose a slightly more effective method of dispatching these djinn than just flinging them around like ragdolls. While Ben sympathizes with Jesse’s stance on not killing anyone or anything unless he absolutely has to, it only takes a few minutes for whichever djinn he’s just tossed into a wall to come crawling back for another go. Even Ben and Claire aren’t killing them permanently—they’d need lamb’s blood for that—but at least the silver keeps them down longer. That woman, the one who was watching Ben earlier, she’s hanging back from the fighting, but she hasn’t taken her eyes off him this whole time.

"Hit the deck!"

Ben ducks just in time for the next djinn to fly _over his head_.

"God _damn_ , Jesse," Ben says, and Claire has to lunge across him to stab the djinn at his flank.

"Pay attention," she chides as the body drops to the ground.

"I am paying attention," Ben says. “You’ve got splinters in your hair.”

Claire flicks her braid over her shoulder. "Grab your knife, hotshot."

Ben looks at his empty hand, then down. His knife glints on the floor where he dropped it. Embarrassed, Ben steps away from Claire to fetch it, twirling it a few times before he looks back up at her.

But Claire has made the same mistake as Ben, watching him instead of the battle. Before Ben can even shout a warning, a heavyset djinn grabs Claire around the waist and twists her knife hand behind her back. Ben hefts his own knife, ready to throw, but the djinn is using Claire as a shield and Ben's just a little too far to reach around her. Claire’s wild backward stabs must hit their mark, because the fire around the djinn’s fingertips flickers out, but she hasn’t dealt enough damage to stop the djinn lifting her up with that crushing grip and throwing her bodily into a pile of wooden crates, which topple around her. She doesn’t get up.

“Fuck!” Ben tries to run after Claire, but the djinn goes for him next. For all that muscle the man is remarkably quick on his feet. Ben slashes at him, anger making him sloppy the way Dean always warned against. “A little help here?”

Jesse must be losing his patience, because instead of harmlessly tossing aside the djinn Ben’s struggling with, a flick of his wrist snaps the djinn’s neck a full 180˚, dropping him instantly. Ben’s adrenaline spikes and it’s not all fear.

But Jesse’s in trouble of his own. The djinn’s leader has recovered, and while Jesse’s attention is on Ben, the djinn swoops in to wrap one meaty hand around Jesse’s throat and slams his head back against one of the large metal columns holding up the ceiling. Blue flames twist to life out of the patterns on his skin.

“Jesse!” Ben yells, and the djinn’s palms flare brighter as he squeezes, drawing out a choked noise that makes Ben's own breath catch in sympathy. Jesse's eyelids flutter shut and his head rolls forward. Ben has just enough time to panic.

Then Jesse's hands fly up to lock around the djinn’s wrist. The djinn screams and jerks backwards, and Ben catches sight of angry red burns where Jesse's hands were.

“Here’s what I don’t get,” says Jesse, advancing on the djinn, and the look on his face is scary but also kind of awesome. “You knew what I was when you came in here. What exactly made you think that anything you’ve got was gonna work on me?”

The djinn is chanting something very fast in a language Ben can’t identify, the pressure in the air building with every word. Ben raises his knife to throw—and that’s the only reason he’s able to ward off the person who tries to grab him from behind. When he turns to face his attacker, it’s the curly-haired djinn he sees, hissing protectively over her sliced palm; her fire’s gone out, at least for the moment.

Then the chanting crescendos, the whole room flares blue, and Ben spins around to see the djinn’s leader unleash a wave of fire that washes over Jesse’s body, burrows into his eyes, and drops him like a puppet with cut strings. Ben’s heart seizes.

That distraction leaves the curly-haired djinn the perfect opening to knock Ben to the ground with a well-aimed elbow to the temple. He goes down hard, face-first on the dirt-caked floor, head spinning. There's a loud _crack_ from beneath her heel, and pain explodes in his ankle.

"Fuck," Ben gasps, but before he can so much as catch his next breath, the djinn whirls so the steel toe of her boot collides with the side of his face. The force of the kick sends Ben rolling onto his side, arms curled around his head, mouth filling with blood. He can’t breathe. Claire’s still nowhere to be seen, and Jesse—

“Get up,” the curly-haired djinn snarls. The other djinn have descended on Jesse, but for some reason this one wants Ben. Ben scrabbles for his knife, but he's pretty sure his ankle is broken, and with his jaw on fire and the wind still knocked out of him, even rolling onto his hands and knees is a struggle. The djinn snatches the knife before he can reach it, pointing the blade at him, then drags him upright and starts herding him towards the doors.

A tall djinn near the edge of the fight catches sight of them. "Brigitta! What the hell are you—"

She stops speaking when the commotion in the center of the room falls silent. The other djinn are backing away as the thin figure in their midst gets to his feet.

When Jesse looks up, his eyes are black.

" _Move._ " The djinn named Brigitta grabs Ben's bicep and hauls him backward, clearly aiming for the doors. Ben's sleeve protects him from the blue fire flickering around her hands and eyes, for now, but it would be a matter of seconds for her to decide Ben's stumbling is slowing her down more than his unconscious body would. With a broken ankle and his jaw throbbing almost too painfully to think, Ben's afraid even to try breaking her hold.

But when they reach the door, which was in fine working order on their way in, Brigitta can't budge it an inch. Ben’s seen this before: no door will open once Jesse Turner decides it should stay closed. She yanks Ben in another direction, but he stumbles on his bad ankle, and with a curse she shoves him to the floor and takes cover behind a pile of detritus. Ben struggles to get back to his feet, eyes streaming with the pain of it, but even Brigitta’s not paying attention to him anymore; all the energy in the room seems to be drawn into the black pits of Jesse’s eyes.

Jesse raises his hand, and the djinn that threw fire at him goes up in a blaze so harsh that Ben has to shield his eyes. When he blinks and looks again, there's nothing left but ashes.

The others panic, stampeding for the door, but neither the doors nor windows are any more accommodating than the one that stopped Brigitta. And yeah, Ben knows they're monsters, but the djinn sound human and terrified when they scream, and Jesse takes care of them one by one like they're nothing, fire flaring up and then dying again, leaving only the smell of burnt meat and sulfur behind.

Only one other djinn remains when Brigitta darts out of her hiding place and raises Ben’s knife high. Just as Jesse burns away the last of her companions, she throws.

The knife hits Jesse squarely in the chest. He staggers forward with an angry, hurt noise, and the pain must have loosened his grip on the doors because Brigitta is now able to wrench one open. With one last glance of pure loathing for Ben, she flees.

Jesse pulls the knife free from his chest with an awful sucking sound. It clatters to the floor. Blood drips from his lips.

"Jess?" Ben croaks, though moving his jaw at all is agony. _He'll be okay. He's always okay. He'll be fine._

Jesse drags his arm across his mouth, smearing blood on his cheek. He takes one step towards the door, eyes still black, and Ben knows he intends to pursue. To kill.

"Jesse," Ben says, stronger, and God it hurts, but he's afraid if he loses sight of Jesse now he might never see him again. Claire’s hurt, and Ben too injured to reach her, and the only thing he can do is turn to the demon-eyed boy standing in the ashes of his enemies and beg, “Help.”

Jesse looks back at him over his shoulder, empty gaze trained on Ben. Ben's pulse stutters, but almost at once the black drains away into a familiar hazel. "Ben?" he asks, face shifting into concern.

 _Thank God_ , Ben thinks, but what he gets out is, "Claire." The R is almost lost under a wash of blood in his mouth. He points at the rubble she’s buried under.

Jesse goes to Ben first, though, helping him up much more gently than the djinn had. Jesse's body is uncomfortably warm to the touch, but Ben can feel the tiny tremors passing through him as he slings Ben's arm around his shoulder, as though all that fire left him cold. "D'you want me to get that?" Jesse says, jerking his head down at Ben's ankle.

"N' me," Ben says, trying to move his jaw as little as possible. He limp-hops toward the stack of crates, tugging Jesse along as much as he can while using him as a crutch. When he hears a familiar groan, he sags in relief. Jesse's still on the right side of sanity, and Claire's alive. Everything's going to be fine.

"I'm okay," Claire calls, but follows it up with a wet cough that puts Ben's nerves right back on edge. When they round the corner, Claire's even managed to get upright, though she's leaning heavily against the wall with one hand and clutching her midsection with the other. Only now does Ben let himself feel the adrenaline rush, retroactive shock at the thought of losing her which he can only allow now he knows he won't. He drops onto a nearby crate.

"You look worse than I do," Claire says, visibly struggling to pull herself straighter. "What the hell happened?"

"Broken ankle," Jesse answers for him, and Ben adds, "Jaw." Jesse leans in a little closer, inspecting the damage to Ben's face.

"Her," Ben insists, even though he can _feel_ the pieces of his jaw grating against each other.

"I'm fine," Claire says again. The words make her wince and hold herself tighter; clearly, they're a lie.

"Let me just—" Jesse presses his palm against the forming bruise on Ben's cheek, drawing the pain away and leaving blissful numbness to filter through his jaw and the knot of tension it formed at the base of his skull. The damage isn't fixed, he can still feel pieces of bone askew, but it doesn't hurt anymore and Jesse’s own wince of pain is gone within moments. Ben tries a tentative smile.

"That should keep you while I do this," Jesse says, slightly pink in the face. When he turns to Claire, though, neither of them miss her flinch.

Now Ben, he doesn't mind being touched. His mom was always pretty handsy, hair ruffles and hugs on the daily, and Dean too, shoulder-squeezing and back-slapping. Through nature or nurture or both, Ben's the same way. After only a few weeks he found himself habitually touching Jesse all the time, a friendly elbow to the ribs or cuff on the back of the head. Eventually, skittish as a feral cat, Jesse had started reciprocating.

But with the lingering phantom sensation of Jesse's hand warm against his cheek, he can't help thinking that even that little contact would be enough to make Claire tense for the rest of the day. Jesse's gonna have to get awfully personal with her to heal those ribs—he knows she'd rather let everything heal naturally, but days of bed rest when they have a cambion on their side just isn't reasonable.

"Claire?" Jesse tries.

"Yeah, yeah." She jerks her head at Jesse, _get over here_. "Let's go, I'm starving."

Ben used to be the one person Claire would reluctantly let near when she was injured, but extra-strength aspirin and a bad joke to take her mind off the pain can't measure up to one touch that'll make the injury like it never was. Cambion painkillers make Ben just woozy enough to resent the way Claire leans back against the wall to let Jesse come close to her.

Jesse has to slide her shirt up a few inches to get his hands on her skin, offering a muttered "Sorry." Claire doesn't respond; her eyes are unfocused, gazing somewhere beyond Jesse's shoulder, and she makes no move to help him. Her body looks vacated. Empty. Ben shudders.

"So _fine_ means punctured lungs now, hm?" says Jesse, but he doesn't seem to expect a response and Ben stays silent too, heart in his throat. Jesse moves his fingers, and Claire gasps, pain drawing her out of whatever mental fortress she'd retreated to, though she squeezes her eyes closed the next moment. When she coughs, flecks of blood drip from her mouth.

Watching Jesse's mouth firm into a determined line, Ben is struck anew by how far he's progressed in the last couple of months. It wasn't so long ago that Jesse refused to use powers on either of them, afraid that the slightest slip might leave them in ashes like he did to those djinn. Now he’s figured out how to leech other people’s injuries into his own body, even accepting the pain it costs him until his powers erase the damage. Jesse's said before that of all the people he could've met when he came back to this country, he's glad it was the two of them; Ben can't believe they've been lucky enough to keep him.

The ribs under Jesse’s shirt move and twitch out of alignment. Very faintly Ben can hear bones grating against each other as they pop back into place; louder is Claire's breathing, getting faster as Jesse frowns in concentration and grips her torso a little tighter, bracing her up. Her eyes stay closed, and Ben tells himself guiltily that he should stop watching. Claire's hands flex and close around nothing. She could have died tonight. He doesn't look away.

"Have you been feeling all right?" Jesse asks suddenly. "It feels like you've got, I dunno, some sort of fever."

"It's nothing," Claire says, eyes still closed. She sucks in a breath. "Look, if you're almost done—"

"It's hurting you," Jesse murmurs. "Can't I just—"

Then Claire's eyes fly open, fully present this time, staring straight into Jesse's. His eyes have gone wide too, and his mouth parts ever so slightly. The next moment Jesse reels back and Claire slumps against the wall, her lips pinched tight together.

"'Kay?" Ben asks, but Claire just nods and walks a few paces away, back ramrod-straight. Jesse rubs his forehead, looking dazed—as if controlling his powers wasn’t enough of a challenge, he has to deal with the backlash whenever he accidentally gets too close to Claire’s grace.

Ben looks down, letting them both have their belated privacy. The pain in his jaw is beginning to filter back in, and he grips the crate under him a little tighter. He'll give Jesse whatever time he needs.

Jesse's dirty workboots enter his field of vision, and Ben looks up. "Sorry," says Jesse, "I just—needed a second, there, but I can fix you now."

Ben raises one eyebrow, but opens his arms to mean, _go for it_. Jesse half-laughs, throwing one anxious glance in Claire's direction before kneeling by Ben's side. "Don't move."

Ben closes his eyes. He has a moment of vertigo, either from pain or its absence, but then Jesse's hand presses against his cheek, steadying him.

Something pops, followed by the weird tingling feeling of his skin knitting back together, the deeper crawling sensation that's the mend of his bones. He can't tell if the sensation is hot or cold, only that waves of it are rolling through his skull and down his spine. He shivers a little, and Jesse's hand twitches. Ben doesn't want to open his eyes, to see his bruises forming on Jesse’s skin, to know exactly how close Jesse's face must be for his breath to be mixing with Ben's like this.

Some indefinable time later, Jesse mumbles, "There." Ben blinks, and by the time his eyes focus Jesse has retreated to a respectable distance, holding his own now-broken jaw to be sure the bones set correctly.

Ben grimaces and spits to get some of the blood out of his mouth. "Thanks." He opens and closes his mouth a few times, testing his jaw, and he's distracted enough by the ease of its movement that he tries to stand up. His ankle informs him otherwise.

"Son of a bitch," Ben swears, falling back onto the crate.

"Shit, sorry," Jesse says, but he's laughing, the bastard. His mouth is already back to normal.

"Some doctor you are," Ben grumbles, but he's pleased to see Jesse approach him again with no hint of awkwardness. "You don't even give out lollipops."

"Only the good kids get lollipops," Jesse answers, failing to hide a smile. He sits, arranging himself so he won’t fall over when his own ankle breaks, and unlaces Ben's sneaker to ease it off. Pain shoots up Ben's leg, and he curses. "Sorry," Jesse says again.

"It's okay." Ben rolls up his pant leg; Jesse rolls down his sock and wraps his hand around the swelling joint. His eyes flick up to Ben’s and then away.

"Dude." Ben ducks his head down to catch Jesse's gaze. "What?"

"I kind of lost my head back there," Jesse says, shoulders hunched. “I burned them. If you hadn’t—”

"They wanted to kill you," Ben says forcefully. He knows why Jesse doesn’t trust himself, knows who Jesse’s thinking of when he says _I burned them_. He doesn't mention how much it scares him, always wondering if this will be the time Jesse can't pull himself back. "C'mon, man—if it weren't for you, we'd be fucked." He closes his eyes when Jesse's palm squeezes a little. It doesn't hurt at all.

"You shouldn't have to watch your back for your own teammates," Jesse mutters. The bones of Ben's ankle pop back into place under his fingers, each one sending a spike of sensation along Ben's nerves, and Ben hears Jesse's ankle snap even as the pain in his own fades. Jesse hisses.

"That’s why we’re training you up, champ," Ben says. "You're way better at directing it now; you snapped that one dude’s neck like it was nothing. And last week, with the vampires? That was just _awesome_."

"Pyro," Jesse says, a reluctant grin coming to his face. "Try your weight on that."

Ben rolls his cuff back down and gets slowly to his feet. Jesse, meanwhile, sits back and gingerly prods the bones into place in his own ankle. Then he uses his hands like a cast, biting his lip while he waits for the joint to set. For someone with no actual medical training, he’s remarkably good at putting himself back together. Ben supposes, with a tiny pang of guilt, that that's partly his and Claire's doing. Their line of work is a dangerous one, after all, and the more serious their injury, the firmer Jesse is in his insistence he take the damage instead.

“Good as new," Ben says, shifting his weight back and forth, and he looks up in time to catch Jesse's tiny pleased smile. He looks around for Claire. "Claire? You good?"

"Let's go," she says, which is not a real answer, but she's still alive and breathing so Ben will take what he can get.

 

* * *

 

Of course, as soon as they make it outside, Ben discovers he lost his phone during the fight. He checks his pockets twice, but it’s the middle of June and there aren’t that many to search. “Probably dropped it when that chick stomped on me,” he says, mostly to himself. Claire is still silent and Ben’s not gonna make Jesse go back and look at the evidence with all that fresh guilt hanging over him, so instead, he hands Jesse the keys to the truck.

“I’m not driving,” says Jesse, appalled. Apparently he learned to drive on the other side of the road back in Australia from someone who'd been a truly terrible teacher, and now he’s convinced he’s going to wreck the truck if he so much as touches the steering wheel.

Ben rolls his eyes. “Just wait in the truck, man. I’m gonna go find my phone and come right back.” He makes eye contact with Claire just to check in, and she nods but doesn’t say anything. Ben claps Jesse on the shoulder and trots off, calling behind him, “You wanna make yourself useful, try calling it!”

The front door opens smoothly, but Ben props it open with a brick just in case. The faint lingering smell of sulfur hangs in the air, stronger the closer he gets to the dining room. _SOMEONE IS TRYING TO SET THE JOINT ON FIRE_ , warns a piece of graffiti on the wall. Ben pretends not to see it. Everything from the creaking floor to the piles of boxed-up junk manages to seem spookier than it was ten minutes ago. _Never go in without backup_ , yells Dean’s voice in his head, but Ben shushes it; he's just here to find his phone—

The tinny chords of "Hell's Bells" echo off the bare brick walls.

Perfect; that must be Jesse calling. Ben follows the sound through the rubble, trying to recreate the fight and figure out where he fell. His boot crunches down on a slippery pile of ash, and Ben suppresses a shudder. Just as well he didn't bring Jesse, then. Did they have time to feel themselves burn, these djinn, or was it over so fast that they only knew what was happening because they'd seen the others go first?

The ringing stops.

"Oh, come on," says Ben aloud. He turns in a circle—there, those are the crates Claire knocked down. He rounds the corner to where they'd found her and there it is, there's his phone, propped up on one of the crates like someone wanted him to be able to find it.

Like someone—

"Welcome back," says the djinn named Brigitta, and then Ben sinks into blue fire.

 

* * *

 

_Monsters aren't real, Ben._

_Yes they are, Marie, and they've got Dean, I need to go find him—_

_Monsters aren't real!_

Ben wakes up slowly. There's a woman sitting in front of him, watching him, her dark hair curling over her shoulders. "Marie?" he slurs.

"Marie?" She raises an eyebrow. "Guess again." Then Ben sees her tattoos, and remembers that his mother's twin sister is still in Cicero where he left her three years ago.

"Ah, shit," he says, struggling for his knife, and that's when he notices he's tied to a basketball pole in what looks like a high school gym. This isn't the Divine Lorraine. How long has he been out?

"Remember me now?" Brigitta uncurls from her crosslegged position and stalks forward to crouch in front of Ben. "You're taller than the last time I saw you. Lost some of that baby fat." She jabs his stomach.

"Who the hell are you?" Ben growls, twisting away. He hasn't hunted any djinn he can remember—there just aren't that many around—but Brigitta seems awfully familiar with him.

"The important question here, Ben, is who are you." Something flashes in her hand and Ben flinches, thinking it's a knife, but it's not. Brigitta gives Ben's phone another little shake. "Dean Winchester's son."

Ridiculously, Ben's first instinct is to argue that he doesn't actually know that for sure, seeing as how his mom died before she could answer any questions of biology. But he does know that if she calls Dean right now, Dean'll walk into this setup with guns blazing no matter what the paternity tests say. "Dean?" he tries. After so long with Claire, he’s out of practice at lying. "I haven't spoken to Dean in years. Think he disappeared off the face of the planet."

"Nice try," says Brigitta, scrolling through Ben's contacts. "We all know what happened at Purgatory's gate. Our First is very interested to make the acquaintance of your cambion friend."

"First what?" says Ben, confused.

Brigitta looks sidelong at him. "The Winchesters weren't the only ones you let out of that place." She puts the phone on speaker so Ben can hear it ring.

Ben squirms, trying to remember how this usually goes on television. She'll tell Dean who she kidnapped, and then make Ben yell something about _don't do it_ , right? But if Ben just stays silent, maybe Dean won't actually believe her; maybe he'll stay away. Ben clenches his newly-healed jaw and resolves not to scream no matter what she does to him. The phone clicks.

"Ben? What's up, kid?"

"Dean Winchester," says Brigitta, a horrifying sort of smile twisting her face. "Nice to hear you're back."

"Who is this?" Dean demands, switching instantly to hunter mode. "Where's Ben?"

"Oh, he's right here," Brigitta replies. Ben pinches his mouth shut, but instead of cutting him or slapping him, she touches his temple with another little spark of blue, her tattoos reaching hungrily toward his skin.

Ben shakes his head and stares at the ground, trying to fight off the sudden woozy feeling in his ears. Why is she putting him to sleep again? What part of the script is this?

_Monsters aren't real, Ben._

When he looks up, he sees Marie on fire.

"No!" he yells, and the picture wavers back into Brigitta, laughing into the phone. Ben hears threats and panic from Dean's end, and he's already given himself away so he shouts, "Dean, do not come get me, Jesse's gonna find me and he can take care of these sons of bitches—" But there Ben falters. _Jesse burns people, remember?_ And then he’s looking at Marie on fire again.

"Maybe you remember from last time, Dean," says Marie, which doesn't make any sense. He's not Dean. Dean is lost. "A djinn's nightmare poison is fatal."

Because she's not Marie, she's a djinn. This isn't real. Ben yanks at the ropes tying his hands together and tries to fight down his nausea.

"Wheaton High School. New Jersey." She touches him again but her fingers feel like rotting meat and Ben can't help it, he screams. "Better hurry."

He never does fall unconscious; she doesn't grant him that kindness. Brigitta turns into Marie turns into his mother, eyes black, asking him why he had to go and fuck up her life by being born. She too catches fire and turns to ash, only to begin again.

During a half-lucid moment Ben notices that someone else has joined them, a tallish young man whispering urgently with Brigitta. "—you promised! What were you thinking?"

Brigitta whirls, baring her teeth, and now she's a snake coiled to strike. Ben gasps and tries to pull away, heart pounding, but she has other prey at the moment. "What was I thinking? I'm thinking it's about time I finish giving Dean Winchester the payback he deserves after what he did to my family."

Family. Now he sees Marie again, snake-bit and choking on bile.

"You need to go to her, beg for her forgiveness," the other djinn says, and Ben tries, but his tongue swells up to suffocate him because he can never talk when it matters. His heart races louder and louder in his ears and he groans to drown it out, but it's breaking his ribs and he can't possibly live through this—

"After what he did to the others?" the newcomer is saying when Ben can hear again. He means Jesse, Ben realizes, and as soon as he thinks it, the djinn takes on Jesse's face. "You need the First's protection, Brigitta, your revenge is going to get you killed!"

"So what!"

She's Claire now. Ben starts to hyperventilate.

"Don't. Don't say that." And Jesse leans in close, whispers to Claire that he—no, it's not them, it's not real. But Ben's careening pulse won't slow down.

"Silver hurt the cambion before," Brigitta murmurs when the kiss ends. "I can fight him, with the knife this one brought." She gives Ben a kick and he feels his side burst like bloated corpses. Maybe he's dead already and just doesn't know it.

"Silver hurts you too," says the Jesse-djinn, and he cups the place where her neck meets her shoulder. _Don't touch her she'll burn you_ , Ben tries to warn him, but he's gotten it mixed up, hasn't he? "If the cambion shows up here, we run, okay? Even if it means losing your bait."

"I want him to _suffer_ ," she hisses, holding onto him like fire. "I want to see Dean Winchester's eyes when his son dies. I want to rub his face in the blood."

The other djinn draws back, his eyes flicking black-blue, black-blue. "And then what?"

Every window in the room shatters.

Someone yells “Run!” and maybe they do, the two with changing faces, but all Ben knows is the sound of his own scream and the all-consuming fire. It eats up the floor and the walls and the roof and the world, and the only thing left is the boy walking out of it, walking towards him.

 _Jesse._ Now that he’s here, Ben doesn’t know how his imagination could ever be fooled by a duplicate. It’s not just the eyes, their steady unending darkness; it’s the raw press of power that sweeps behind him like a cloak, more tangible even than the fire he commands. Ben half-laughs, half-sobs in exhausted relief.

But the fire isn’t fading this time, and neither is the demonic black in Jesse’s eyes. There’s something wrong. Ben’s Jesse carries his powers like a burden, not a crown. “Jesse?”

A slow grin uncurls from Jesse’s mouth. “What a nice change, to see the hunter tied up for once.” He moves faster than Ben can follow, one second shrouded in smoke, the next leaning over Ben in a predatory crouch, sharp fingers gripping Ben’s knee. He cocks his head, licks blood off his teeth.

“Jesse,” Ben says, scrambling back against the unforgiving pole, trying to keep his voice steady. “Jesse, snap out of it, this isn’t you—”

“What isn’t me?” Jesse leans even closer, his black eyes cold and appraising. “The fire? The pain?” Before Ben can ask _what pain_ , he feels the crack of every vertebra in his spine. Jesse continues speaking over his scream. “Did you think my other half was a myth? That they call me the Antichrist for nothing?” Ben shakes his head, nerves searing, but Jesse holds out a handful of flames. “Did you mistake me for something you could tame?”

“Please don’t,” Ben begs, as Jesse reaches towards him. The hand on his knee grips tighter, scorching like a brand. “Please don’t burn me, _please_ , just put the fire out—”

“There is no putting the fire out,” says Jesse. "Not by you. Not by demons, or djinn. Not even by hunters." He sighs, smug and unrepentant. “She tried so hard. Always has to be in control, that one.”

Jesse's smile widens, and Ben's stomach drops. He asks, desperate, "Claire?"

Jesse tips his head back and laughs. "Turns out it's not so hard to make her scream for you after all." He leans forward, voice deceptively soft. "You just have to know the right tricks."

And then he withdraws, even as the heat redoubles on Ben’s tear-streaked face. The flames let someone else through: disfigured, horrible, bubbling skin sloughing off while her shiny-pink burns reflect the flickering light. Her mouth gapes like a wound. “Ben.”

“Claire,” he sobs; he knows her even like this. “What—what did he do to you—”

“Ben, it’s not real. Whatever you’re seeing, it’s not real.” Her lips split with lines of pus and blood when she speaks. Claire hates to be touched but she touches him now, the sticky exposed flesh of her fingers crumbling to ash when she grips his chin. His stomach heaves.

“Claire, I’m so sorry—” Smoke is smothering him, forcing its way down his throat. Like mother like son. He can never protect the people he loves, even from themselves. This is his fault, he tries to tell her; it’s always been Ben’s job to keep everybody human, and now he’s failed in the worst way possible. He knows with utter certainty that this is where he dies. They’ve lost Jesse.

Jesse lifts his hand once more, and Ben closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to watch his own skin burning off.

 _Cold._ Blissful, wonderful cold. Ben convulses under the shaking fingers on his forehead, and little by little the fire retreats. When he finally opens his eyes there’s only Claire, her skin intact and unmarred, and Jesse, hazel-eyed. Ben blinks, and Jesse scurries away.

“That must have been some trip,” says Claire, sawing away the ropes at Ben’s wrists. “More djinn?”

“I—” Ben sways when he gets to his feet, dizzy with half-formed memories, and Claire holds him steady. She’d better be careful or he’ll think he’s still dreaming. “It was the woman from before,” he finally says. “The one that got away.” Ben stumbles in the direction Claire leads him and his boots crunch on shattered glass. That much, at least, was real.

“Is she still here?” Jesse’s voice is quiet, but Ben flinches at the sound of it. He wishes he hadn’t as soon as he sees the pain cross Jesse’s face— _it wasn’t real_ , Ben reminds himself. Any other hunter would ask the same; it doesn’t mean Jesse plans to turn back into that vengeful fire-clad thing to hunt her down, first Brigitta and then Claire and then him—

Ben lets go of Claire’s arm, and throws up.

“I think it’s best we just find a motel,” says Claire after a moment’s pause. Ben wipes his mouth, ashamed. “We can regroup, come back in the morning.”

“I’ll go start the truck,” says Jesse, almost too low to be heard, and his rapid footsteps echo in Ben’s ears across the gym and out. Unsteady and still a little nauseous, Ben starts to follow.

“He’s still himself,” Claire says quietly, no longer touching Ben but there at his side in case he falters. “Whatever you saw him doing—it wasn’t real.”

“I know,” says Ben. “I know that.” Rationally he knows Jesse would never let himself fall so far, would run before he’d ever hurt either of them, and he plans to tell Jesse as much just as soon as the afterimages of the flames fade from his vision. He glances at Claire to remind himself how she looks with whole skin. “And you’re okay.”

Her steps falter, just for a second. “I’m okay,” Claire agrees, and lets her hand rest on the small of his back for a moment before leading him outside.

 

* * *

 

It’s well past midnight by the time they check into the cheap motel in the run-down outskirts of town. Ben signs his name _Gregory Aframian_ and pretends not to notice the clerk’s suspicious glares at his rope-burned wrists. He’s exhausted, crashing after all that adrenaline, but he locks himself in the bathroom and runs a shower anyway because he can still feel the powdery scrape of Claire’s burnt fingers on his face.

The steam and the hot water do help clear his head—not least because there’s no chance of fire there—and when Ben emerges, he feels like he can face a night of sharing the bed with a cambion. Drying his hair off, he hears the murmur of voices from the room and pauses to listen.

"He doesn't hate you. He was high on djinn poison, it's nothing to do with how he actually feels about you."

"I saw what he was seeing," Jesse says. "Just for a second, while I was healing him, I saw it. Black eyes and fire. I saw what I look like to him." Ben’s breath catches. If Jesse thinks—

"It was a hallucination," Claire says firmly. "His subconscious dragged out his worst fears, and you just happened to be there."

“He was waiting for me to kill him, Claire.” Mattress springs squeak, and then Jesse says more quietly, "I don't want to be his worst fear."

“He worries about you,” says Claire, in the same quiet tone. “Not because he doesn’t trust you—”

"But he doesn't get it." Jesse sighs. "Not like you do. I mean, you grow up thinking you're normal and then bam, surprise, you've got something in your blood that won't ever wash out, and suddenly no one looks you in the eyes anymore."

Claire makes a soft noise. "Give the guy some credit, Jesse. He's trying."

"I know that," Jesse says, frustrated. "I can see him trying. But it's not something he _can_ understand, you know? He's only human, and some part of him is always gonna think of people like me as the thing that goes bump in the night." Ben barely catches the next words. "I just thought we'd been doing okay."

Ben opens the door.

Jesse jumps to his feet. "Um," he says. Ben moves toward him, unsure what to say, but Jesse beats him to the punch: "Think I'll shower as well." And he ducks into the recently-vacated bathroom, lock clicking behind him.

Claire sighs.

"He's freaked, huh," says Ben once he hears the water running.

"You heard."

He nods. _Is it true?_ he wants to ask. _Do you understand him better than I do?_ And: _What about you? All our years together, do you think now he knows you best?_

He says neither. Instead he clears his throat like Dean would and asks, "So how'd you find me?"

"Phone GPS." She squints, hearing the question he's not asking. "He kept it together. Broke all the windows in the gym when we saw you, but that was the only thing."

Ben nods and keeps nodding, like this is all a normal recap after one of Jesse's training sessions. Right after Purgatory Jesse would blow out the truck's tires whenever something so much as startled him; his control really is getting better. "And he didn't go after the djinn?"

Claire's lips press together. "I told him not to." Ben looks up at her, surprised, and she shrugs tightly. "You were in a bad way."

"Oh," says Ben. She won't look at him. _But you don't let feelings get in the way of a hunt_ , he wants to remind her, because if that fundamental truth is changing on him then what reality is Ben supposed to cling to?

Claire stands up. "You should get some rest," she says. "We'll hunt them down in the morning."

That's more like it. Ben climbs into the bed further from the door, easier to do with Jesse still showering in the background. He should stay up until Jesse comes out, apologize properly, but as soon as his head hits the pillow he feels his exhaustion and unease pulling him under.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [The Divine Lorraine Hotel](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_Lorraine_Hotel) is a real abandoned place, and [the graffiti](http://hiddencityphila.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/admin-22.jpeg) Ben saw is real, too.


	2. Part II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some optional listening for this chapter: awhile back, Liz made [this ambient background](http://relaxing.ambient-mixer.com/stargazing) to go along with the first scene after the dream.

_It's raining, he remembers. The water flows up the windowpanes and he can't see past the flat grayness outside. The two of them are chopping vegetables. Marie has carrots; Ben stares at the windows and doesn't see what's on his cutting board._

_"I'm worried about Dean," Ben says to her. "He wouldn't go this long without calling unless something had happened. I can't get Sam or Bobby to pick up either. Something's wrong."_

_"So call the police, fill out a missing persons report—don't drop out of school to go look for them, for God's sake. You're_ sixteen _, Ben." Marie’s too-familiar face never changes, washed out by the light from the windows, and the thok-thok-thok of the knife stays steady._

_He's heard this before. He knows how this conversation ends. But his mouth stays on script, letting the words out without his permission. "He needs help! Am I supposed to just sit here and wait? Someone's gotta save him!"_

_"From what? Monsters?" Thok. Thok. Thok. "Monsters aren’t real, Ben."_

_"Yes they are, Marie, and they’ve got Dean, I just know it," Ben says. He can't even feel his mouth moving. It's like listening to his voice on a recording. "You think I'm making this up? I'm not some kid who doesn't know the difference between what's real and what's pretend!" Thunder rolls outside. Something drips onto the floor. "I don't care if you believe me or not. I'm gonna find him."_

_"If you keep talking like this, I'm not even letting you out of the house." Marie's hands move faster and faster, just blurs now. She doesn't look at him. "Lisa trusted me to take care of you."_

_"And look what happened to her!" Something wet and warm and alive twitches under Ben's hand. He looks down at the cutting board. It's a hand, the skin peeled off and laying in piles around it. It pulses gently under his knife._

_"What’s that supposed to mean?" Marie says, and when Ben looks back up her carrots are fingers. She slices into each one neatly at the knuckles, paying no mind to the bones or the blood. They fall off the cutting board into a pile on the floor, filling up the room. Ben's feet are rooted to the spot. The door isn't where it should be, and he can't open the window or he'll let all the gray in. But the fingers are piling up so fast —_

_His voice speaks again. "Remember when I told you how Mom died? I was lying. A demon killed her."_

_"Ben," Marie says. The fingers are up to their knees now. “Ben, honey. Did Dean tell you that?”_

_The fingers are up to his waist, clutching hungrily. He can feel the blood pooling around his feet and seeping into his shoes. "He didn’t need to tell me. She was possessed, I saw it. I saw what that demon did to her."_

_"Ben, listen to me very closely." She spits out a finger. "I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be talking to Dean right now."_

_"I_ can’t _talk to Dean, aren’t you listening? He’s disappeared!" Fog roils against the windows, reaching for him just as surely as the fingers now up to his chest. "I have to find him. Please."_

_In the dream, unlike the memory, Marie doesn't look scared or upset, but the fingers are up to their necks now and Ben is still frozen in place. "No, Ben. You're staying here with me until we figure this out."_

_"But—"_

_She looks at him, and her eyes are black. "Promise."_

_Ben says, "I promise."_

_The lie sits hot and sour like ozone on his tongue, pounding behind his skull, but it frees him. Ben races to the window, fighting his way past grasping hands. He slams his elbow right through the glass and the whole world shatters but he sees the Impala sitting out in the gray, it's right there if he can just cross the wide black river in his way. He tries to step over it, but he slips, and—_

—wakes with a start, heart pounding in his throat.

God, like the djinn nightmares weren’t bad enough. He's only spoken to his aunt once since he put Cicero in his rearview mirror for good, and this isn’t the first time his subconscious has been kind enough to remind him that he has no way to know what terrible fate could have befallen Marie since then. He rolls over carefully, trying not to wake Jesse up, but there’s no one beside him and the bed is cold.

Been a while since this happened, but after what Jesse saw, Ben can’t blame him. He gets out of bed, not bothering with his shoes, and just hopes Claire is as asleep as she appears to be.

With so few cars scattered across the parking lot, it’s easy to spot the truck. It's a hot, clear night, asphalt warm under his feet, mostly quiet save for a TV droning through the open window two rooms down and the muffled radio playing Stones from the family-owned grocery across the street. Jesse's rolled out one of their sleeping pad across the metal truck bed, and Ben knows for a fact that there’s a knife under that pilfered motel pillow. Jesse looks vulnerable, exposed with only a ratty Army blanket to cover him—but not much is a danger to the Antichrist. Let him sleep.

As soon as Ben starts to back away, though, Jesse's eyes open. Hazel.

Ben coughs in that I-totally-wasn’t-watching-you-sleep kind of way. "Hey."

"Something happen?" Jesse asks, sitting up and rubbing the back of his head. He's wearing his black **SURF NAKED** t-shirt tonight, the white letters peeling from overuse, and his shaggy hair is all askew.

"No," says Ben, "just. Couldn't sleep."

“Nightmares?” Jesse hazards, tucking his legs up and staring at his feet.

“Guess it’s not surprising, after the djinn.” Ben hops into the truck bed, muscles a little shaky from sleep. Jesse startles, but he’s hardly looked up before his gaze is skipping away from Ben’s again, staring out across the other side of the parking lot. Even Ben can guess what that’s about. “Nothing to do with you, by the way.”

Jesse smiles, self-deprecating and bitter, still looking away. "What've you got in your head that's scarier than me?"

Ben flexes his hands and wiggles his fingers a little. "Uh, my mom's sister," he finally says. He tries not to talk about Marie if he can help it, but the dream still feels so vivid that he has to say it out loud to remind himself how ridiculous it was. “We were home, like in her kitchen, and both of us had cutting boards but we were chopping up people’s _fingers_ , dude, it was so fucked up.”

“That’s—pretty fucked up,” Jesse agrees, his face turning cautiously in Ben’s direction, though not yet making eye contact.

Emboldened, Ben keeps talking. “Yeah, it was weird. I could hear us talking, it was the exact same fight we had right before I left to go find Dean—I didn't even remember that I remembered all that—but Marie was just standing there.” His mind conjures up her blank, black stare, sees the knife again in her hand. “She was possessed, in the dream. That’s not the part that woke me up but it—cause of my mom—” He breaks off, hoping he doesn’t have to explain again about the demon who drove a blade into Lisa Braeden’s guts and twisted. “Marie and my mom are twins,” he finishes weakly.

"What happened to her?" Jesse asks, quieter. "Your aunt."

God, he's probably imagining some monstrous catastrophe. Ben almost wants to make one up, because he knows how the truth makes him sound. “Nothing.” Force of Claire-ingrained habit makes him specify for honesty: “Nothing that I know about. I haven’t really—I mean, I send her postcards every now and again, but—” He rubs his forehead. “I ran away from home when I was sixteen. She thought I was nuts for believing in monsters, and I basically haven’t spoken to her since.”

Jesse is silent for a long time. Maybe he understands, runaway himself that he is, though when Jesse left he stole away his parents’ memory of ever having a son; they hadn’t missed him. Maybe he resents Ben for having family, estranged or not, when Jesse will never have the chance to see his own family again. The longer he doesn’t say anything, the more guilt gnaws at Ben’s stomach.

“Don’t tell Claire, okay?” he blurts. He’d given Claire only the barest details of his life when they first met, and never corrected her assumptions afterward for fear of how she’d look at him. Didn’t confess even after Claire finally told him about her father walking out of her house and into an angel's arms, gone before she could beg him to stay.

“She doesn’t know?”

“She’d kill me.” Ben sits up straighter, turning toward Jesse. “Look, that’s not what I came out here for.”

“Oh. Right.” Jesse picks at the blanket, back to not looking at him, failing to ask the obvious question.

Truth be told, Ben isn’t all that sure himself what he came here for, except that it’s starting to feel wrong to fall asleep in a bed without Jesse in it and he can too easily imagine this self-imposed exile lasting all summer. Jesse says that every now and again he gets homesick for the desert, misses the feeling of the open sky above him, and so those nights he camps out in the truck bed until his wanderlust is soothed. The true answer probably has more to do with his offhand comment that hunters have a harder time cornering you outdoors.

“Hand me a beer,” Ben decides; he’s got a feeling he’s going to need it.

“Uh, okay.” Jesse leans back and stretches for the cooler, shirt riding up a little. The ice in the cooler has mostly turned to water, but the beer's still cold, and Ben pops it open and takes a sip. Ben feels the truck creak as Jesse tentatively leans against the cab beside him. He doesn't even have to look to know Jesse's shoulders are hunched up again.

He takes a long swig and addresses himself to the clear night sky. "I heard you and Claire, earlier."

There's a pause. "And?"

Ben taps his fingernails against the aluminum can and risks a glance. "And okay, maybe I don't get you the way Claire does, but I'm not afraid of you, Jesse."

Jesse's laugh is ugly. "Yeah? That why your worst nightmare is begging me not to burn you?”

“Come on, Jesse, that was just cause—”

“I saw it, Ben. Okay?” Jesse's hands clench into fists in his lap. “I saw. I look like a fucking horror show, Jesus.” He presses his knuckles into his eyes.

“That is _not_ how I think of you,” Ben says firmly, tugging Jesse’s hands down. “Hey. Stop it. Look, the thought was only there because I’d seen you torching djinn like half an hour earlier, okay? I bet with some more practice you won’t even go black-eyed anymore. You just need to learn some control.”

"I've been trying!" Jesse yells. He reins himself in almost immediately, but Ben can't pretend he didn't feel a spike of alarm. "Do you know how many times I've wanted to get rid of this whole problem? Do you know how easy it would be to just wish myself _anywhere_ else? I could make it so you never even knew I existed!"

" _Don't_ ," Ben says, and he grabs Jesse's elbow as though that would be enough to stop him. "You can't, okay? Don't do that."

Jesse finally meets his eyes, still breathing too hard, but after a minute he shakes Ben's hand off and looks away. "I'm still here," he says gruffly.

Ben sits back, willing himself to calm down. Jesse may still be here right now, but if he decided he'd had enough, there would be nothing Ben could do about it. At least if Jesse were human he could be tracked, chased down, made to listen. If Jesse were human they wouldn't be having this problem.

The silence expands between them. Ben can see Jesse withdrawing back into himself, but he’s lived with Claire for almost three years and he knows how to stop someone from hiding in their own head. "Hey," he says, and holds out his rope-burned wrists. "You missed a spot."

Jesse looks at the red scrapes and bruises, then at Ben. "Didn’t seem keen on letting me near you, before."

"I'm pleading temporary insanity, and also the fact that these itch like a motherfucker," Ben says. Jesse still hesitates, and Ben tries a smile, ignoring the sudden empty sensation in his stomach. "I mean, I understand if you're too tired, but we need to have a serious talk about your reputation if you can't even take care of a couple scratches."

"Shut up," Jesse says, and grabs both his wrists.

It hurts a little at first, Jesse not being particularly gentle as he drags Ben closer, but once Ben's sitting up on his heels and Jesse's shifted to face him, his grip loosens. Jesse turns Ben's arm, careful not to touch the bit of palo santo tied there on its leather cord, and his thumb just barely brushes the deepest cut on the inside of Ben's wrist. Ben shivers. Then Jesse takes a deep breath, his shoulders relaxing for the first time since Ben woke him up, and he sends the power dancing across Ben's skin. For a minute both their wrists are encircled with the same red lines—then just Jesse’s, and then they fade altogether.

"There," Jesse murmurs. But he doesn't quite let go, and Ben doesn't pull away, even though his blood still hasn't settled and Jesse can probably feel it with his fingers against Ben's pulse. Jesse looks up at him, holds his gaze this time, and Ben doesn't see any trace of darkness. They hang there for a minute, suspended, waiting for something, and Ben thinks: _shit, I’m gonna kiss him._

Wow, totally inappropriate, shut down that train of thought right now. Ben coughs and sits back against the truck cab, resisting the urge to run his fingers across the healed skin on his wrists. “See?” he says weakly. “Not scary.”

“No?” Jesse says, in a low voice that could mean anything.

There is a right thing to say here; he just has to come up with it. He just has to calm himself down, Christ, he’s losing his cool over a little hand-holding and meanwhile Jesse probably still thinks Ben hates him. He takes a deep breath. "I'm not scared of _you_ , okay?" he says. "I'm—afraid that something is gonna mess you up so bad that you lose yourself. And that we won't be able to get you back."

Jesse swallows audibly. "Oh."

"Yeah." Ben stares determinedly at an old stain on the metal in front of him. He's pretty sure his face is giving off visible heat. He swallows the rest of his beer, too fast, and crushes the can against his knee.

It’s not just that Jesse’s afraid of hunters—and rightfully so, after what happened with the last ones he tangled with. It’s not even the complete mystery of Jesse’s romantic preferences, which, statistically and also based on how he looks at Claire sometimes, are likely to skew toward women. It’s that Ben has known Jesse Turner for a little less than three months now, and if this is how he feels after such a short time being just friends, he honestly doesn’t know if he could handle something more.

His feelings for Claire did not prepare him for this. And that’s a whole different barrel of guilt, the spoken and unspoken promises he’s made Claire regarding his heart, but for the majority of their first year together Ben pretty much hated her. Arrogant, abrasive, always certain she was right and absolutely closed-lipped about anything that might give him a hint about who she was underneath—if she hadn’t made such a lethal hunting partner, Ben probably would have ditched her, loneliness be damned. Only gradually did he begin to understand the silent language of Claire’s affection, the little gestures of kindness that she would deny if anyone dared point them out. Slowly, like a seed putting down roots, that spark of whatever made Ben stick with her had spread and grew into the kind of love so unshakeable that even now he doesn’t think it’ll ever really go away.

Jesse, though, Ben had liked from the moment he met him, for no real reason other than he had a nice smile. He’d wanted to help Jesse find the thing that killed his parents, of course, same as any other victim, but the undercurrent of interest had been there from the beginning. He’d felt irrationally angry when Jesse ditched them at the diner, furious to find out Jesse was the sort of thing to get caught in a devil’s trap. But Claire had taken him aside to explain— _if he hurts us, it’ll be because he’s scared, nothing else. We need to make him feel safe._ Jesse’d barely been out of the trap two days before Ben was back to trying to make friends with him.

And now Ben wants to kiss him. What is he supposed to do about that?

This time it’s Jesse that breaks the silence, sounding a little hoarse. "What time is it, anyway?"

"Late enough to be early," Ben says. He tips his head back, imagining he can see the first hints of dawn in the dark sky beyond the streetlights, focusing on the scattered stars instead of how fast his heart is still pounding. “Look, I found the Big Dipper,” he says, basically just to make noise. “They're really clear right now; too bad that's the only one I know.”

“I know lots, actually,” says Jesse, settling in next to him again. His shoulder is very warm. “It was weird, seeing the northern constellations again after so long—you don’t notice how familiar they are until they change, you know?—but I remember my mom teaching them to me. She used to tell me how pirates used the stars to navigate their ships when they didn’t have a compass.”

“She sounds awesome.” More guilt over Marie trickles back in, sobering him. Ben wonders how much of Jesse comes from his mom—his real mom, not Meg or the poor lady she knocked up to bring Jesse into existence. He wishes he could’ve met Mrs. Turner before she died.

“Yeah, uh. She was.” When Jesse shrugs, Ben feels the movement in his own body. But Jesse just sits up a little straighter and points upward with the arm that isn’t touching Ben. “See there? That’s Cassiopeia.”

“Is that like Cassandra?” asks Ben, whose Greek mythology is not the strongest. He’s not even sure what Jesse’s pointing at, but finds himself not caring. He yawns widely.

Jesse huffs, not loud enough to be a laugh. “She was a queen. She thought her kids were prettier than the gods, and so they sent a sea monster down to eat her daughter.”

“Harsh,” says Ben.

“It’s okay, though. Perseus came and saved her.” Jesse’s finger moves down toward the horizon. “There he is, holding Medusa’s head. He slayed all sorts of monsters.” His hand drops, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out why he stops talking after that.

"Bet he was a dick, though," Ben says lightly. "Heroes usually are."

Jesse looks sideways at him from beneath his hair. "I dunno," he says. "Some heroes are all right." His smile, tentative at first, solidifies when Ben returns it.

Sleepiness is making Ben loopy. “Come on,” he says, wriggling down to lie on his back properly. He cricks his neck up at Jesse until Jesse follows, unrolling the second sleeping pad to settle in warm and solid along Ben’s side. Ben lifts his arms straight up and opens them to encompass the whole sky. “Tell me more.”

So Jesse does. The walls of the truck bed rise just high enough on every side to cut them off from the rest of the world, and even as Ben lies here with goosebumps from a summer breeze to remind him how very out in the open they both are, his body registers Jesse’s warmth beside him as a signal that it’s safe to rest. He blinks slowly.

Jesse catches him before he’s entirely asleep. “Ben, hey.” Ben mumbles and tugs his eyelids open again. “Don’t you wanna go back inside?”

“Not really.” If he were a little more tired or a lot more drunk, he’d bury his face in the crook of Jesse’s neck. That thought wakes him up enough to rise up on his elbows, squinting; Jesse does come out here to get away from people. “You want me to?”

Jesse shrugs. “You don’t have to.” His tone sounds familiar, and Ben realizes it’s at the level of indifference only achieved by those who care desperately. When Ben fails to respond, Jesse shifts around and then hands over his blanket. “Only you might want that, if you’re staying.”

Ben takes the blanket and drapes it over himself. “Won’t you get cold now?” he says through a yawn.

“Nah. I run hot.”

“Of course you do,” Ben sighs. He curls up closer to Jesse despite every intention of giving him space, but he’ll worry about giving himself away in the morning. “Thanks,” he adds, quieter.

If Jesse says anything else to him that night, Ben’s not awake to hear it.

 

* * *

 

_“Ben.”_

Ben lurches upright to wakefulness, hard-wired to respond to the steely command in that voice. He discovers there’s no knife under his pillow at about the same time that his brain comes online to recognize Dean.

"Dean!" he says, some combination of little-kid happy and mortified. He and Jesse are both wearing clothes, but not exactly a lot of clothes, and if there was any sort of cuddling going on—but Jesse isn't even in the truck anymore, having leapt out into a half-crouch beside it so the whole truck is between him and Dean. Dean looks pissed.

“What the hell, Ben?” Dean demands, as Ben kicks off the blanket and tries to flatten his hair. “I haul ass halfway across the country to rescue you from whatever kinda crazy that chick was, don’t find a goddamn clue what happened to you when I get there, spend the rest of the night tracking you down—and you couldn’t be bothered to drop a line that you were okay before you started your little slumber party?”

“I’m sorry,” says Ben, trying to shuffle his thoughts back in order. Between his nightmares and Jesse, he’d honestly forgotten about Dean, but he’s not stupid enough to say so. “She took my phone.”

“She?”

“The djinn. Brigitta.” Hadn’t there been someone else with her? Or did he imagine that part? His only clear memory is of Claire’s burnt skin and Jesse’s flame-wreathed fingers coming closer and closer. “Jesse saved me,” Ben says, to himself as well as Dean. “I told you he would.”

Dean’s eyes shift to Jesse, and Jesse’s intake of breath is loud enough for Ben to hear it. “About that,” Dean says. “Care to explain why the two of you were sleeping together out here in the open?”

Ben doesn’t know how intentional Dean’s use of _sleeping together_ was, but the only rebuttal that comes to mind is _we sleep together every night!_ and that would just make things worse. It’s been so long since Dean was in Ben’s life that he probably doesn’t even know Ben is bi.

“Ben fell asleep by accident,” says Jesse, though he’s still tense in every muscle. “The djinn did a number on him.”

“But you saved him, that right?” Dean’s wearing that dead-eyed smirk he reserves for the evil things he hasn’t figured out how to crush yet, and behind him a streetlight blows out.

“Okay!" Ben says loudly. "Let’s go get some breakfast, huh? I’m starving.” He slides off the back of the truck. “Claire’s probably awake already, as usual, and there’s no way a town this size doesn’t have a decent pancake place, right?” He takes short steps, but even so he’s halfway to the room before Jesse falls in at his side; only once they’re both walking does Dean follow behind.

Claire is awake, as predicted, sitting on her perfectly-made bed and reading something on the iPad in her lap. She doesn’t seem surprised by Ben and Jesse wandering back after a night outside, but when she sees Dean, she gets to her feet. “What’s he doing here?”

“The djinn called him when she kidnapped me,” Ben says. As soon as they’re through the door, Jesse high-tails it to the bathroom and locks himself inside. Ben attempts to convey to Claire by eyebrow that they must keep Dean off the subject of Jesse if at all possible.

He’s not sure if she got the message, but she does stare Dean down in a way that has never failed to capture anyone’s attention. “As ransom?”

“As bait,” says Dean. His eyes linger on the closed bathroom door, but then he turns to Claire and Ben. “That’s why you’re gonna stay right here until I’ve dealt with her. All of you. Ward the room, lock the doors, spend some quality time with reality tv.”

“But I’m hungry,” Ben says. It comes out whinier than he meant it and he hates that, hates anything that increases Dean’s already-considerable disdain for him right now. He coughs and squares his shoulders. “I’m sure if we all go—”

“Not happening.” From the pockets of his omnipresent jacket—seriously, it’s June, how is he not sweltering—Dean pulls out a nub of red chalk and starts drawing symbols on the walls. He only gets halfway through a pentacle before Ben realizes where that shape is going and jumps in.

“Whoa, hey, no devil’s traps!” He scuffs away the outer lines and gives himself a splinter on the motel’s wood tiling. “We’re not even running from demons, dude. Is there anything that works on djinn?”

Dean isn’t fooled: he looks to the bathroom door again, then at the two beds in this room, and then, eyes narrowing, at Ben. Ben shifts and wipes his chalk-covered palm on his t-shirt.

“So that out there, it wasn’t a one-time thing. You’re actually sleeping with a demon.”

“I’m not _sleeping with_ him.” Ben’s face has gone all sorts of red, it’s horrible; he can feel his cheeks giving him away. “We share a mattress because it’s cheaper to get just the one room, okay?”

Dean looks at Claire, and she raises her eyebrows right back, daring him to say anything.

“Besides,” Ben tacks on, desperate to change the subject. “He’s not a demon.”

“Anything that gets caught in a devil’s trap is not something you wanna be messing with,” Dean says. “I can’t believe I have to tell _you_ that.”

Before Ben can come up with a response, Claire steps between Dean and the bathroom door, hands on her hips. “You don’t like it, you can leave.”

Dean’s brows almost fly off his face. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me.” Claire doesn’t budge an inch. “You want to hunt, go hunt. Don’t come in here and insult our friend.”

“Is she being serious right now?” Dean says to Ben, almost starting to smile, but Claire takes another step forward.

“Jesse saved your life, Dean Winchester, and you’re not one to be deciding what makes a demon. I know where you came from.” For a split second her eyes seem to glow.

Dean’s incredulity starts to turn into genuine anger, and Ben rattles off “Dean can I talk to you in private?” all in one breath before they can come to blows. He tugs Dean back outside by the elbow and closes the door behind them, and miraculously, Dean lets himself be led.

“Your girlfriend is a—” he begins, but Ben says “Dean!” and that finally shuts him up.

“Look,” says Ben. “I’m glad to see you, and I’m sorry I didn’t let you know I was okay sooner, but can you please cool it a little?”

“Hey, she started it.” Dean rubs his jaw. “Isn’t that that girl who shot Cas?”

“Her name is Claire,” Ben says. “Her dad is Jimmy Novak, and Castiel’s been wearing his body for the past ten years, so yeah, they’re not great pals. But that’s not the point.” He swallows, bracing himself for a fight with the last person he wants angry with him. “You gotta lay off Jesse.”

Dean gives him a once-over. Ben hasn’t reached Dean’s height, probably never will, but he’s a lot closer to eye level than he’s used to being and that makes it a little bit easier to keep his eyes up. “You trust him,” Dean says. “Why?”

“He’s my friend,” says Ben, taken aback. “He saved you, he got you and Sam out of Purgatory.”

Dean laughs humorlessly. “Never yet been saved by someone who didn’t want something from me. Except maybe Sammy.” He looks back at the motel door again. “I ever tell you how Sam started the Apocalypse?”

“Yes…” What does that have to do with Jesse? “He was addicted to demon blood, right? He broke the seals that let Lucifer free.”

“It wasn’t just him,” says Dean. His jaw tenses. “This chick named Ruby. A demon. She’s the one who got him hooked on drinking her blood. She pretended she was on our side, and she told him he was doing the right thing, but all the time she was waiting to get him to that church to break the last seal.”

“Jesse doesn’t try to make me do anything,” Ben points out. “Except maybe take his shifts at driving.”

Dean gives Ben another look that’s hard to interpret, then takes a deep breath. “Look, maybe this kid’s on the level. But if he’s not?” He grips Ben’s shoulder. “You need to stop relying on that freaky demon mojo to get you out of a tight spot, cause as soon as you start expecting him to be there, that’s when you get blindsided.”

“That’s not going to happen.” Ben shoves aside the nightmare Brigitta planted in his head. “Jesse could’ve let me die a half dozen times in the last three months. All he asks for is that—that we not _hunt_ him.”

“Hm.” But after a moment Dean shakes off whatever train of thought that led him down, and claps his hands together. “First things first. Tell me everything that happened with this djinn, and then you kids stay put because I’m gonna kick her ass.”

 

* * *

 

After considerable grumbling, Ben agrees to stay behind, a decision that Claire and Jesse endorse primarily on the grounds that it means they won’t have to spend the day in Dean’s presence. Dean doesn’t try to draw any more traps, but he does check both the locks and the salt lines on their windows before the Impala rumbles out of the parking lot again. Ben watches him go with that old kick of _what if he never comes back_ that has tripled in intensity since the time it actually happened, and hopes this doesn’t turn out to be a mistake.

Problem is, there’s not a whole lot to do in their motel room. When Ben and Jesse have finished their thirtieth consecutive round of poker (and traded laundry duty back and forth at least as many times), Ben tosses the cards aside and flops in the direction of Claire’s bed. Claire, still reading, ignores him.

“I’m bored,” Ben declares, as he has at least five times already. “Claire, tell me a story.”

“Once upon a time, there was a boy named Ben, and he interrupted his friend’s research so often that she chopped him up into little pieces and no one ever found the body,” Claire replies, deadpan.

“Ooh, are you actually researching?” says Ben, moving onto her bed to peer at the iPad over her shoulder.

“Yes. Murder.” But Claire’s mouth twitches when she says it, and she straightens her back, tucking her braid behind her once more. “No, I was looking up more about djinn. I was curious what those djinn said when they first came in—about the First?” She hands him the iPad. “I think they were talking about their alpha.”

“Their what?” says Jesse, as Ben frowns down at the screen.

“I remember Dean telling me about those,” Ben says. “They’re like, the big daddy monsters, the ones that made all the others. The originals.” A good two-thirds of the page Claire was looking at is written in Arabic. He hands it back to her. “Translation, please.”

“It’s sort of a prequel to Aladdin,” she explains. “A lot of the lore gets confusing, because the word _jinn_ was used for pretty much every kind of spirit or monster out there, but this one seems to mean the dream-granting kind we just tangled with. In this version, a great sorcerer finds the most powerful djinn in all the world, and uses this spell to capture it.” She taps a picture of an old manuscript. “Once the djinn is bound to a magical object, it can be controlled by whoever owns that object. In this case, of course, that was a lamp.”

“And let me guess: this one isn’t nearly as friendly as Robin Williams.” Ben chews on his bottom lip, thinking of Dean out there tracking a djinn who’s not afraid to kill all the people she holds dear. Maybe Dean can handle Brigitta and her sidekick, but an alpha?

“What’d they want with me?” Jesse asks quietly.

That’s right—aside from Brigitta, the djinn hadn’t given two shits about Ben. They’d had their eye on a bigger prize.

“Maybe they heard you’d opened Purgatory,” Claire says. “I imagine an alpha might have one or two reasons to want back all the ghosts of their lost progeny.”

Jesse grimaces, swiping his hair back out of his face. Ben feels an unpleasant pull in his stomach at the thought. He was the one who made Jesse open Purgatory in the first place. Hadn’t Brigitta said they let something else out? Now Jesse’s got djinn after him, and Dean wanting to trap him, and more hellfire than any one person could possibly be expected to keep a lid on. Because he helped Ben.

Ben coughs. “Hey, y’know, might just be your charm and rugged good looks.”

“Yeah, that’s the one,” Jesse says, rolling his eyes, but some of the tension leaves his shoulders.

“Well, they kidnapped me, didn’t they? Obviously these djinn have excellent taste.” Ben strikes poses until Jesse cracks a smile—as does Claire before she turns around to hide it, bonus combo points—and then he adds, “We could do some more training, if you want. So you can fight 'em off next time.”

Jesse’s eyes flick to the chalk-smear on the wall. “Eh, I don’t think the motel staff would be too pleased about that.”

“So we can do it in the parking lot.” Ben pushes himself upright, nudging Jesse with his shoulder as he goes. “C’mon, man. Gives us something useful to do.”

“Hm, yes, it would be nice to throw some knives at things,” Claire says, and that settles them.

Ben loads his gun with silver bullets—unlikely that the djinn will make an appearance in broad daylight, but he’s not taking any chances—while Claire collects every single silver knife they own, a little less than a dozen in total. Jesse goes unarmed, though he does give the chalk on the wall a distrustful glance as he passes. After some negotiation, they decide to stay in the overgrown field behind the motel: relatively hidden from passersby, but more than close enough to hear the distinctive growl of the Impala when Dean returns.

“What do you want to work on?” Claire asks, setting her backpack down in the tall grass. “We don’t have any djinn poison handy, unfortunately, but if they know what you are they’ve got plenty of options.”

“What about that blue fire?” Ben says suddenly. “That knocked him out for a pretty long time. Do you know what spell that was?”

Claire frowns. “I didn’t see that part,” she says, but Jesse cuts her off before she can ask more.

“Rather not do fire stuff right now, if it’s all the same.” When Ben looks at him, Jesse grimaces and shrugs. Looks like he took away something different than Ben did from their little discussion last night.

“That’s fine.” Claire, meanwhile, stays unruffled as ever. She opens the backpack and draws out the first of the knives. “Silver, then. Go stand over there.”

Jesse does as she tells him, jogging out into the middle of the field between two pine trees. There’s a half-rotted picnic table there, and he climbs up onto it and spreads his arms. “Ready when you are.”

Claire throws.

Her aim is true: the knife nearly hits Jesse’s chest before he slaps it away. Ben sees a flash of red from Jesse’s palm, and Jesse shakes his hand out with a hiss, but his eyes stay the right color.

“ _Powers_ , Jesse,” Claire reminds him. “Come on, do it without using your hands.” She throws the next knife, and Jesse manages to slow its flight somewhat, but still has to pluck it out of the air to keep it from hitting him. “Focus,” calls Claire.

Usually Jesse’d say something snarky there, but either he’s more worried about the djinn than he let on or he really wants to prove he’s got himself under control; he only drops the knife on the table beside him and nods at Claire to throw the next. This one he manages to send curving away past his right elbow.

“Nice one,” says Ben, because Claire won’t give Jesse any praise until they’re done, if then. Still, Jesse’s lucky to have her: ever since Jesse told them how the Simms brothers repaid his trust, Ben’s tried desperately to avoid causing Jesse any pain at all, no matter how instructive the experience might be. He can teach Jesse how to shoot, or drill him on monster lore, or make pointed comments about people who don’t know how to drive; that’s his contribution. He can’t look Jesse in the face while he’s pointing a knife at his heart.

“Again,” says Claire.

Of the next several throws, Jesse manages to deflect nearly all of them, though Claire catches him once in the forearm and once across the shoulder when he doesn’t push the knife quite far enough off-course. Both injuries heal within seconds of their appearance. Jesse’s shirt isn’t so lucky, and Ben finds himself watching the tiny bit of skin on Jesse’s shoulder appear and disappear under the tear as he moves, until finally Claire uses up her ammunition.

She turns to Ben with a little smirk. “Fetch.”

Ben rolls his eyes, but he does his part, tramping around to collect all the knives wherever Jesse dropped them. He presents the collected knives to Claire and barks at her to draw out a laugh.

“Ready?” Claire asks Jesse, and he nods. Claire fires quick this time, one-two-three, and to Ben’s amazement, Jesse stops all three of them in mid-flight. Ben whoops, and Jesse catches his eye. Clumsily at first, but gradually getting faster, the three knives begin to juggle themselves.

“That’s amazing!” Ben exclaims, unheeding of the motel full of people behind them. It’s like watching Jesse do tricks with the hackeysack, but better—all the natural grace he has with his body is being channeled through his powers, control used purely for fun.

Jesse laughs. “Hey, if this hunting gig doesn’t work out, there’s always the circus life. How do you feel about sequins, Claire?”

“I think you’d look lovely in them,” Claire shoots back. She goes into her backpack again, and when she reemerges, she’s holding a bottle of holy water and her Super Soaker.

Jesse lets the knives drop. “Aw, c’mon, I was kidding,” he whines, but Ben knows holy water doesn’t really bother Jesse—the question of whether he should practice freeing himself from devil’s traps has been brought up once, and only once.

Claire just strides close enough to be in range, Ben trotting after her. “Come on, we’re not done.” She carefully pours half the bottle into the toy gun’s water tank and stoppers it again.

Claire pumps the Super Soaker, points it at Jesse’s face, and pulls the trigger. Jesse leans back in a move that’s straight out of the Matrix, but of course the water isn’t going nearly the speed of a bullet; the arc just falls down across his stomach anyway. Jesse curses and slips, falling flat on his back. For a second Ben’s breath catches—if that hurt him enough—

Then Jesse grabs the table on either side of his head, kicks off the bench, and does the laziest back walkover Ben’s ever seen. He bounces a little when he lands, clearly pleased with himself, damp t-shirt sticking all down his front.

“Now you’re just showing off,” says Ben, which isn’t to say it’s not working. Even Claire’s mouth twitches at the corner.

“Practicing,” Jesse corrects, with an overwrought head-toss. “My circus routine will be so dazzling that the djinn won’t know what to do with themselves.”

“That how you wanna play this?” Claire says, though she’s lost some of the seriousness now, infected by this playful mood Jesse’s gotten into. “Why don’t you show us some real acrobatics, sequins-boy?” She pumps the water gun again.

“Gimme your best shot,” Jesse taunts, and dodges clear of the next spray of water Claire directs at him. She shoots again, but Jesse vaults over the opposite end of the table to evade her, and soon the two of them are running around the table in circles, both grinning like mad things. Ben stands on the sidelines laughing, drawn helplessly closer by their happiness, and so he’s well within range when Jesse decides to grab Ben’s shoulders and use him like a shield.

“Hey!” says Ben, still laughing, and that’s when Claire hits him with a shot of holy water right in the face. He sputters and spits and isn’t at all sorry that he caught that instead of Jesse. “Claire!”

“Casualties of war,” she says, with a smile that’s downright devious. Ben tries to dodge out of the way, but Jesse follows him, hanging off his shoulders and pointing him at Claire, laughing unrepentantly all the while.

“You,” Ben starts, and turns around, grappling Jesse’s hands off him with a move that’s more schoolyard slapfights than any real technique. “How you like that, huh?” Jesse responds the same way, no form at all to the way he bats at Ben’s arms and tries to grab him again. Ben hooks a leg around Jesse’s knee that sends them both toppling, and then he’s so breathless with laughter and the force of falling that he can’t even lever himself off Jesse enough to keep fighting.

He hears Claire come over to stand over them, sees the neon of her squirt gun in the corner of his eye, and then a sudden weight pins them both down as Claire puts her foot on Ben’s back and leans over to look Jesse in the face.

“Whatcha gonna do now?” she asks in a lethally teasing voice, and Ben can actually feel the way every muscle in Jesse’s body tightens at once.

“The _hell_ are you three doing?”

Their laughter goes out like a snuffed candle. The weight of Claire’s foot vanishes as Ben rolls off and scrambles to his feet, Jesse close behind him. Claire’s got the Super Soaker pointed at Dean like it holds something a lot more lethal than holy water, and only lowers it when Ben moves forward to intercept Dean before anything can happen. Ben opens his mouth and waits, hoping it will provide him with some reasonable excuse for rolling around in a puppy pile with the demon boy Dean thinks he’s screwing, but no such luck.

Dean doesn’t yell this time. Instead, his voice goes deathly calm. “What are you doing outside the motel room?”

Ben’s head bows of its own accord. “We were just getting a little stir crazy,” he says, careful not to even look at Jesse. “We have knives with us, look, and my gun’s got silver bullets in it—”

“And the kiddie toy?” says Dean.

“Holy water,” Claire says. Ben doesn’t look at her, either, but he can feel her itchy trigger finger from here. Dean stays focused on Ben.

“Did I not explicitly tell you to stay _inside_ until I got back? I mean, did I not make myself clear?”

Ben grinds his teeth. “Technically, we weren’t any safer in there than we are—”

“Yeah, except when you were inside I knew where you were!” Dean looks around the field, which is as empty now as it was when they arrived, but now Ben sees the danger flags as Dean’s eyes land on them: the pair of dumpsters that could easily conceal an attacker, the tall fence hiding who knows what, the strip of road not far away that’s secluded enough for all sorts of foul purposes. Dean turns back to Ben. “Don’t you think one kidnapping in twenty-four hours is enough?”

“I’m sorry!” Ben bursts out. “I’m not trying to flaunt _orders_ or anything, but Dean, I can take care of myself!”

Dean goes quiet again. “Can you two give us a minute.”

Claire doesn’t say a word, but with the way she stalks past Dean toward the motel, she doesn’t have to.

“You okay?” Jesse mutters to Ben as he passes. Ben nods tightly, surprised that he stopped to ask, especially given how wide a circle Jesse walks to avoid being within Dean’s reach as he leaves too. Dean’s eyes flick to watch him for a second before they land back on Ben.

Then they’re both quiet for a while, each waiting for the other to speak.

“Flaunt orders?” Dean says finally. “That what you think this is?”

Ben colors. “I didn’t mean it like—”

“Ben, I’m trying to keep you safe.” Dean smoothes a hand over his face. “I don’t wanna be your commanding officer and I don’t want you to 'yes-sir' me when deep down it’s making you hate my guts, okay? But there are things out there actively trying to kill you cause of me, and I don’t want you making it any easier for them, either.”

“I know,” Ben mumbles. He takes a deep breath. Oddly, it’s his mom’s voice he hears in his head, telling him _use your words_. “I get why you’re worried. But I can’t just—sit inside and wait until all the monsters are gone, you know? I’m a hunter, Dean.”

Dean laughs joylessly. “That’s the last thing I wanted you to be.”

“Why, though?” Ben clenches his hands. “If there’s something coming for me, isn’t it better that I can fight it myself? Isn’t the world better off with more people saving it?” He almost asks, _don’t you trust me_ , but stops himself in time. Instead he says, “You taught me this, Dean. You taught me how to—to shoot a gun, how to fight something stronger than me and win. I’m safer now, knowing this, than if you’d left me totally alone and these things came after me anyway.”

Dean’s shaking his head, but when Ben’s finished he says, “All right. All right.” He shoves his hands in his pocket and offers a rueful smile. “It’s just—last time I saw you you were sixteen, kid. Now you’re all running around on your own with—” He glances back at the motel but thankfully doesn’t say exactly what he thinks Jesse and Claire are. “I’m still adjusting, here.”

“Me too,” Ben admits. “I keep looking for clues about where you’ve gone and then remembering, 'Oh, wait, he’s back already.'”

A pained expression crosses Dean’s face. Then he coughs, and in a much brighter voice he says, “Hey, isn’t your birthday coming up? Don’t tell me I missed your twenty-first.”

“Nah, that’s next year,” says Ben, just as happy to let the conversation drop. He doesn’t add, though he’s sure Dean knows, that he’s been using fake IDs for years.

Dean clears his throat. “Well, hey, how about I buy you a drink anyway? It’s been a while since I could be a bad influence.”

“I thought we weren’t supposed to drink on the job,” Ben points out, though he’s never once known Dean to follow that rule. “Did you find Brigitta already?”

“Trail was a bust,” says Dean. “They musta slipped town once they lost you. Got your phone back, though.” He hands it over. “I figure we regroup, take the night off, and go after them in the morning.”

That seems odd to Ben, given the way Brigitta was talking, but if there had been anything to find Dean would have found it. He pockets his phone and shrugs. “Hey, sounds good to me. I’ve got a deck of cards and we could use some more cash anyway.”

Dean squints at him. “And who taught you to hustle poker?”

Ben laughs. “Just cause we were playing for pennies didn’t mean I didn’t notice you cheating, Dean.”

“I would never,” Dean says, hand to his heart. “I am a respectable citizen and a grown-up.” He can’t keep a straight face for very long, though; soon he breaks into a chuckle and claps Ben on the shoulder, guiding him back to the motel room. “C’mon. Let’s see if your _friends_ are up for a night out.”


	3. Part III

To Ben’s surprise, Dean’s brusque not-apology goes over well enough that Claire agrees to come out with them. She’s usually just as happy to sit in their room and read, but Ben figures their collective cabin fever from earlier must still be affecting her. Jesse, he suspects, joins them simply because he doesn’t want to be left alone.

The pub has aspirations of Irish authenticity that are ruined by the upbeat pop music bouncing from the speakers. Claire heads immediately for the bar, while Dean scouts them out a booth towards the back and buys them all a pitcher of Blue Moon. He’s trying to be polite, Ben can tell, but with Jesse there the conversation is stilted and filled with pauses. Eventually, to Ben's guilty relief, Dean claps his hands and tells Ben to watch the master at work before going to hustle some pool.

Jesse loosens up when it becomes clear that Dean won’t be back anytime soon—and when Claire returns to the table bearing a round of shots. Ben lets the alcohol burn all the way down and puts everything else out of his mind.

"We should play a drinking game," he decides some time later, pleasantly sloshed. "Let's play never have I ever."

"What is this, a slumber party?" Claire says, but she's halfway through a screwdriver herself and her neck is loose as she takes another sip.

"It's more fun with Katie's rules," Ben says. To Jesse he explains, "In this version you say things you _have_ done, and the other people have to drink if they _haven't_ done it. That way the people who haven’t done any fun things yet are tipsy enough to try 'em."

Jesse frowns. "Like what sort of stuff?"

"Anything. Things you've done that you're pretty sure we haven't."

Jesse raises an eyebrow. "Opened Purgatory."

Claire obligingly takes a drink, so Ben does too, but rolls his eyes. "Fun stuff, not the depressing shit," he says, smacking his lips around the whiskey. "Like, you know, sex stuff."

Jesse's ears go red and Ben really really wants to know about that. He waits, but Jesse mutters, "I just went, it's your turn."

Feeling brash, he says, "All right then, gave a dude a blowjob. On purpose."

Jesse looks at Ben's mouth and then throws back a long swallow.

"Is there a danger of you doing it by accident?" Claire asks, and Ben looks at Jesse and thinks _maybe_. Then he notices that she didn't drink, and his thoughts get derailed in a whole different direction. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea. Before he can decide if that means he actually wants to stop, Claire toasts them both and waggles her eyebrows. "Been propositioned by lesbians."

"You break Katie's heart, you really do," Ben says, over Jesse's muttering that that's not really fair. They both drink.

"I thought Katie had a girlfriend?" says Jesse. "She tried to shoot me over her once."

"I'm pretty sure she was making a joke," Claire says, but Ben talks over her.

"Nuh-uh. Katie would a hundred percent for real sleep with you if you said so, Emily gave her an exception and everything. You're on her bucket list." Ben snorfles. " _If you know what I mean._ "

His hilarity is met with blank stares. "Is that...slang?" asks Jesse, squinting, and Ben cracks up.

"Oh, this night is going to end well," Claire says, which only makes Ben laugh harder. "Your turn, Jesse."

Jesse swirls his glass, ears reddening again. "Erm…dropped out of school?"

"Boooo," declares Ben. "Also, I totally did that too. Claire, you have to drink."

"You dropped out?" Jesse asks. "Why?"

Ben shrugs. "Dean disappeared. Went to go look for him." He doesn't go into any more detail, well aware that there's a lie detector sitting right beside him, and hopes Jesse remembers his promise last night not to say anything about Marie. Claire knows the bare outlines of this story—she's the one who made him get his GED—but as far as she's concerned, finding Dean was its happy ending, and he isn't keen to disabuse her of the notion. He turns to confirm that Dean's still merrily sharking the pool tables, that Dean is still on Earth and alive. Dean doesn't notice him looking, but just seeing that easy smile back on his face is enough for Ben.

He coughs and brings his attention back to the table, trying to think of a good one. He catches Jesse looking away from him and no, seriously, Ben needs to know how he's supposed to be reading this. He squints and says, "Kissed a boy."

Claire pointedly leaves her glass on the table—which wasn't a given, he has no idea what she does with the occasional guys she picks up but it doesn't look gentle—but Ben's too focused on the swoop of disappointment that comes with Jesse picking up his drink. Halfway there, though, Jesse's eyes widen, and he puts the glass back down. His face has gone white.

"That's a story if I've ever seen one," says Ben, heart pounding, but Jesse just shakes his head.

"Ended badly." He stands up. "I'm gonna go get a refill."

As Jesse scurries over to the bar, Claire kicks Ben under the table. "Ow," he complains. "What? C'mon, you were curious too!"

"Try to use your brain, Ben," she mutters, overbalancing a little as she leans toward him. "Have you completely forgotten what he told us in Colorado?"

Ben doesn't have to dig for the memory of finding Jesse alone on a mountain and being told to leave him there. "All he told us that time was about those Australian assholes who took him in and then tortured him." Fuckers. The Simms brothers are dead and Ben still wants to give them a good kick in the teeth. Claire raises her eyebrows at him, waiting for him to figure it out. "Wait—you think he—"

"Did you even look at his face when he was talking about them?" She watches Jesse crossing the room back toward them. "You forget that he was their friend before he was their target. And in case you hadn't noticed, Jesse gets attached to people really, really quickly. I'd bet money that's who it was." While Ben's mind is spinning with this new information, Claire motions Jesse to sit back down and gives the awkward silence a quick death by saying, "My turn." There’s a split second of hesitation, then her shoulders square and she announces: "Bondage."

Ben, who had started to take a drink for entirely different reasons, chokes.

"You do _not_ ," he sputters, desperately ignoring the sudden situation in his jeans. "We spend all our time in the boonies! How do you even find people who want to—" He can't finish that sentence.

"Small-town boys are very repressed," Claire replies, her face just _radiating_ smugness, though her grip on her drink is a lot tighter than it was a few minutes ago and there’s a flush rising on her collarbones. She isn't making eye contact with either of them.

Jesse looks like he just received a grievous head injury. Faintly he says, "So…are you the one who…"

"They're also very good at taking direction," says Claire lightly. Jesse picks up his new drink and doesn't put it down until half of it is gone. Yeah, Ben seconds that emotion. Then, as if that weren't enough, Claire waits for Jesse to finish and then gives him her brightest, most dangerous smile. "Your turn."

Jesse opens his mouth and nothing comes out.

"Come on, man, get her back for that," Ben says. They're all skating on dangerously thin ice here, but he is far past the point of caring. "What's the kinkiest thing you've ever done?"

"Um," Jesse says.

Ben is not quite drunk enough to excuse this but he does it anyway. "Blindfolds?" The image plants itself in his mind as soon as he says it, and Ben shivers. Jesse shakes his head no. "Spanking?" No. "Rimming? Sex toys? Anal?" No, no, no, and Jesse's cheeks are red enough to fry something on. Ben can practically smell the smoke. Claire now probably knows way more about Ben than she ever wanted to, but unless Jesse's sex life is way weirder than any of them suspected, he's starting to run out of ideas. "You have had sex, right?" he jokes.

"Course I've had sex," says Jesse all in one breath, but that makes Claire tense up all over, and she grimaces like she just tasted something bitter.

Ben frowns. "What was that?"

"You'd better tell him," Claire says to Jesse. "He'll keep this up all night otherwise."

"Tell me what—wait, was that a lie? Was he lying?" Ben turns back to Jesse, whose face is now buried in his hands. "Seriously? You've _never_ had sex?"

"I'm _the Antichrist_ ," Jesse says, muffled. "Even if I hadn't spent half my life on the lam, it's not like there's a queue round the block."

"But you're—" Ben tries to think of something to say that is not _fucking gorgeous_. This is bad, this is so so bad, he was hoping this crush would go away but now he's thinking about all the things no one has ever done to Jesse and wondering which of them he'd like best and just, fuck. Fucking fuck.

Jesse lets his hands fall. "Funny enough, accidentally setting fire to things whenever I get _worked up_ is not a side effect most people are keen on, lately I even start fires when I try to—God." And he downs the rest of his drink.

"Oh my _God_ ," Ben says, and Claire bursts out laughing.

"Is _that_ what happened in Topeka?"

"I didn't do it on purpose!"Jesse exclaims, but he's succumbed to helpless little giggles of his own and Ben is never going to recover. "It's all Meg's fault. Ever since I took her powers they've gone haywire at the slightest little thing. I had totally gotten that under control until now, I swear."

This, of course, is when Dean chooses to make his entrance. “You three look like you’re having a good time.” Claire snickers behind her glass, and Ben drops his forehead onto the table. Dean adds, “Had what under control until now?” and Jesse’s laughter cuts off immediately.

“Long story,” Ben says, lifting his head up again. “Hey, how’d you do at pool?”

Dean doesn’t fall for it, though. “Hope you know when to call it quits on that stuff,” he says to Jesse, pointing at his drink. “Last thing we need is a hellgate opening up under the dance floor.”

"Ugh, _Dean_ ," Ben mutters, as all the tension Jesse managed to let go of over the course of the night comes back tenfold.

"I can't get drunk," Jesse says, which adds an interesting twist to the last fifteen minutes, but with Dean here the potential for any sort of moment is long past. “And I know how to handle myself, okay?”

Dean takes a sip of his own whiskey. "So is that a no on the hellgate thing, because from what I recall, you had no problem tearing open Purgatory like it was a—"

"For God’s _sake_ ," Ben says, but Jesse just stands up and places his glass on the table with a low thunk.

“I’m going to have a smoke,” he says.

“Jesse, c’mon,” says Ben, but then Claire stands up too and leans on his shoulder.

“I’ve got him.” She glares at Dean and adds, “See if you can talk some sense into him, but I doubt it.” Her steps, as she follows Jesse across the bar, have a slight unsteadiness that Ben hasn’t seen her allow in a long time; Jesse doesn’t waver at all on his way out the door.

“Yeesh,” says Dean. “Touchy.”

Ben turns on him. “Can you please give it a rest for one night?” he says. “One night! He wasn’t doing _anything_!”

Dean raises his eyebrows. “And how much have _you_ had to drink?”

"I'm _fine_ ," Ben snaps. Some small, mean part of him wants to ask Dean how much _he_ drank tonight, and if it's anything like the way he drank at their house while Sam was dead. “Look, it’s not gonna do you any good to make nice if you keep accusing Jesse of murder every twenty seconds. Just leave him alone.”

Dean’s face hardens. “Forgive me for getting a little concerned when the kid who let loose every creepy crawly we’ve ever ganked says he’s losing control. What was he talking about?”

“That’s none of your goddamn business!” Ben yells. The alcohol rushes straight to his head when he stands up, but at least this conversation has effectively killed that boner he was working on. “He opened Purgatory to save _you_. For me, because I asked him to. And you never even said thank you, you never do anything but talk about what a horrible evil demon he is, and I’m sick of it. I’m _sick_ of it. So either lay off him or just _go away_.”

And he storms off before Dean has the chance to say a word.

His exit is neither dignified nor particularly swift. He’s not trying to get to Jesse so much as he’s trying to get away from Dean, letting the crowd buffet him back and forth as he passes through it. Claire’s better with words anyway; Ben always ends up putting his foot in his mouth. Uncertain biology aside, if Jesse still looks at Ben and sees Dean’s son, that probably makes him about the last person he wants to see—

A dart slices through the air right in front of his nose. Ben spins, hand already going for his gun, but his balance isn’t the best and he probably shouldn’t be open firing in a bar anyway, so when the dart-thrower reaches out to steady him, Ben lets his hand drop.

“God, I am so sorry, I didn’t see you at all—are you okay?”

The voice is low like Jesse’s, and faintly accented. Ben looks up to match it with a sweep of brown hair, blue eyes under pierced brows, a worried frown that seems familiar. The guy’s grip on Ben’s shoulder is surprisingly strong.

Ben looks at the dartboard, where every dart clusters tight around the middle circle, then back at the guy. “Good shot.”

“Good thing, too,” says the guy, “or your face would’ve been a lot less handsome at the end of the night.” He lets go of Ben and takes a step back, laughing a little, then offers his hand. “Ian.”

“Ben.” They shake, and Ben catches Ian giving him the once-over. Dean’s little intrusion turned most of his sexual frustration into the regular unpleasant kind, but hey, seems like it’s more than happy to switch back. And why not? He’s feeling keyed up and rebellious, and maybe getting some real action will make his brain cool its jets about Jesse. He smiles a little wider and adds, “You up for a challenger?”

Ian grins.

Ben’s still pretty far into wasted, but he learned to aim from Dean Winchester and he relishes the way Ian’s eyebrows shoot up at his first bullseye. Ian holds his own, though, striking the center with nearly every throw and edging into Ben’s personal space in a way that could almost be accidental but definitely isn't. It’s a closer game than Ben expected, and they're both less than sober, so when he wins with one last beautiful hit, he yells “Ha!” right in Ian’s face.

“Your sportsmanship is admirable,” says Ian, but he’s looking at Ben’s mouth. Ben wets his lips without thinking about it, and Ian meets his gaze with heat in his eyes. They're so blue Ben doesn’t know how he could have forgotten that; he was picturing hazel.

Ian smiles slow and says, “Hey.”

“Hey,” says Ben.

Ian leans in a little closer. “You wanna get out of here?”

Yup, yes, Ben does want that, thank you very much. Dean’s probably mad at him for flouncing away like that, but screw Dean anyway. Ben can spend time with anyone he wants; right now that’s Ian. “Lead the way,” he says, and Ian nearly pushes him out the door.

It’s cooler outside, which sobers Ben up enough to let him feel a little guilty. Sure, he’s basically been telling Jesse about his hookups all night, but what’s he gonna think if he sees Ben actually going home with someone? And he’ll have to check in with Claire, at least let her know where he disappeared to—but Ian drags him to a secluded section of the parking lot and kisses him again before opening his car door, so it can wait until the fun part’s over.

The car's a beat-up station wagon with a musty beige interior, and Ian hurriedly brushes a fast food wrapper off the passenger seat before Ben gets in.

“Romantic,” Ben says, though he's still more than happy to lean across the seat and meet Ian's mouth once he gets in. Making out in a car reminds him of high school, but it’s uncomplicated and just what he needed, just simple human pleasure without any sort of dire destiny to fuck it up, no need to worry about demons or angels or every other kind of freaking monster that flocks to the three of them like flies to emotionally-damaged honey. He only wishes his life were always this easy.

“You really are cute, you know,” Ian says between kisses. “All the more reason for him to come after you.”

“Huh?”

Ian pulls away, and to Ben’s horror, tattoos swirl into being along his arm, wreathed in blue flame. “Sorry,” says Ian. “Boss’s orders.”

“Fucking _Brigitta_ ,” Ben explodes, trying to break free of Ian’s grip. There’s a silver knife in his boot, if only he can get to it—

“I'm not taking you back to Brigitta,” Ian says. “Do you know how much trouble she caused last time? Probably get herself killed. No,” he says, stroking Ben’s cheek with his glowing hand, “I'm taking you to the First. And when the cambion comes for you...”

The car sputters to life and begins to move. Ben would be more worried about that, probably, were he not already sinking into blackness.

 

* * *

 

Someone's humming.

It filters in slowly, low and gruff; Ben identifies Dean's voice and then _Smoke on the Water_. He cracks one eye open, gets blinded by sunlight, and throws his arm over his face with a groan.

The humming pauses. "Ben?" Dean asks. "You with us?"

"Urgh." The couch he's on has gotta be the most comfortable place he's laid his head in years, and he just wants to go back to sleep. But Ben forces his eyes open and his arm away, and there's Dean's face hovering above him, drawn in worry. Ben feels a pang of guilt for how they parted, especially now that it seems Dean's bailed him out yet again. "How long was I out?" he asks, eyeing the sunlight pouring in through the still-blurry windows. This room seems naggingly familiar, but his brain is too fuzzy to figure out why.

"Long enough," Dean says. "How do you feel?"

"Had worse," Ben says, and sits up slowly to check himself over. His pain is nearly gone, actually, and there's no nausea or shakes—whatever Ian hit him with must be a lot nicer than the stuff Brigitta had used. "That other djinn—I think he knows where Brigitta is."

Dean isn't listening, though. "Hey, he's awake!" he calls toward the second floor, and Ben hears someone thundering down the stairs. Stairs that he recognizes, because he’s seen them before.

Slowly, Ben takes in the rest of his surroundings. Baseball trophies on the shelf in the hallway. A framed high school diploma. A scattering of amatuer photographs on the walls: pictures that show him, and Dean, and—

And—

"Ben," says the voice he’s never forgotten. "Thank God."

Ben gets to his feet. “Mom?”

She’s _here_. This isn’t a photograph, it’s his flesh-and-blood mother standing here in the living room of their old house in Cicero, and she looks almost as grateful to see him as the other way around. Ben drinks in every familiar detail of her: the flyaway strands of hair that all her curling efforts can’t keep in place, the same bright-patterned shorts she’s worn to bum around the house every weekend since he can remember, the way she always seems lighter on her feet than anyone else in the room. She’s truer to herself than any memory his brain could conjure on its own—and that’s how Ben knows she isn’t real at all.

“What’s the matter, kiddo?” says Dean. “You look like you saw a ghost.” He chuckles at his own joke.

“I’m just gonna—” Ben says numbly, and flees to the kitchen.

Out of sight of his mother’s phantom image, he tries to catch his breath, but the kitchen is no safer: everything, from the dents he and Katie put in this linoleum to the scratch paper covered in his mom’s handwriting, adds another stone to the weight of memories trying to drag him under. The fridge holds yet more pictures of Ben with his family—but not just the ones he remembers from childhood. These pictures tell a story quite different from his own history: a story where Dean stayed with them, and Ben graduated high school, and he spent the past eight years with a mother. This djinn poison is brutally effective, and already he can feel pieces of his mind slipping toward this new reality where his mom has always been here with him where she belongs.

Ben wishes Ian had given him the other kind of dream. It wouldn’t be nearly so cruel.

But he can’t stay, and he doesn’t have long to end the dream before he loses all desire to. Ben pats down his clothes and can’t find a gun anywhere on him. Fine; he knows how to be resourceful. He’s in a kitchen, isn’t he? Ben pulls a knife from the block next to the coffee machine—and then has to pause, gulping down several deep breaths, because this is going to hurt. With his other hand he starts prodding at his neck, seeking the vein.

“Ben?”

He makes the mistake of turning around. “Mom,” he says, and his throat chokes up like it’s already been cut.

“What are you doing?” she asks, and then looks closer. “What’s wrong?”

Ben tries uselessly to stop his chin wobbling, and has to put down the knife. His attempt to say _I’m okay_ comes out as a wordless, raw noise, cut off before it can become a sob, and then his mom circles her arms around him and Ben holds onto her like he's never going to let go.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” he mumbles, pressing his forehead against her shoulder so her shirt soaks up the moisture from his eyelashes like it has so many times before. She pets his hair and shushes him, and Ben squeezes her waist tighter, sniffing. She even smells the same. He knows she's not real but he can't—he can't make his mother watch him die.

“What’s bothering you, sweetie?” she asks, and just hearing her ask makes him choke up again.

“I’m sorry you got stuck with me,” he says, still muffled into her shoulder—he can’t risk looking her in the eyes and seeing them flood demon-black. _You know she’s begging me to kill you. Says you hold her back._ Ben shakes his head, eyes closed. “I know you had a, a rough time of it, trying to raise me all by yourself, and you couldn’t have—have fun anymore—”

“Ben, what are you talking about?” she says, tugging away to frown at him, nudging his chin up.

“I’m always getting into trouble,” Ben says. He laughs, watery. “Hell, I’m in trouble right now. Staying in here acting like it matters what I say.” He wipes his nose. “I just want—you died and I never said—no one ever said thank you, to you. I didn’t mean to ruin your life, Mom, you put up with so much of my shit and I didn’t ever—”

“Ben.” She takes his face in both hands. “Of course you were trouble. You’re my son. I wouldn’t have you any other way.” And she draws him forward to place a kiss on his forehead.

Ben’s tears flow freely at the touch. He needs to end this, now, because he’s already trying to talk himself into staying. He pulls back and smiles, voice hoarse. “Hey, can you turn around a sec?”

His mom raises her eyebrows but does as he asks her. Ben wipes his eyes on his sleeve and picks up the knife.

A voice says, "You've _got_ to be kidding me."

Ben spins, now holding the knife as a weapon. There’s no one behind him. When he turns back around, his mother is gone—and standing in her place, tattoos undulating over his skin like vines in a breeze, is Ian.

Ben raises the knife. “You.”

“Can we not do the villain/hero face-off thing?” says Ian, holding his hands up in surrender. “I’m not interested in hurting you, Ben. I just need you to stay put a little while longer."

“You _poisoned_ me,” Ben says in disbelief. “You're kidnapping me!”

“Yeah, okay,” says Ian, “but only temporarily!”

“Like hell temporarily, you’re using me as bait. _Again_.” It must have been Ian that Ben saw with Brigitta last time, after all; he does look enough like Jesse for that hallucination to make a sort of sense. It seems he’s changed his mind about the advisability of holding Ben hostage. Ben side-steps toward the knife block, but that makes Ian come closer, so he stops.

“I can't believe how quickly you gave her up,” Ian says. "Did you just not like your mom that much or what?"

"Fuck off," Ben snaps, and wishes he'd had the chance to blow his nose before having this conversation.

"Cause see, me," Ian continues, "I'd take whatever I could get. My parents, my siblings, anyone. I lost all of them in one hunters' raid and I'd sure jump at the chance to see them again."

"It's not real," Ben whispers, though he still feels the temptation to pretend that it is, only barely kept in check by his knowledge that he needs to wake up, and soon.

Ian holds out his hand, which starts to glow blue. “I can make it real to you. You just have to stop fighting it.”

“Back off!” Ben slashes the knife in front of him, not far enough to hit Ian but enough to keep him away. “I don’t want some—some fake version of my mom who tells me whatever I want to hear. So you can just take your little acid trip and shove it.”

Ian squints. "Everybody wants something."

“Yeah, and I want to wake up,” Ben says, but then reality itself starts to shiver around him, and his mom’s kitchen disappears in a curtain of blue fire.

The new scene starts with the smell of grilled steaks and gun oil. Like a watercolor in reverse, the amorphous surroundings form into tables, chairs, a long bar and a high wooden ceiling with shadows for the rooms upstairs. Sound fades in last, a comfortable rabble of voices layered with the clinking of silverware, and then Ben is standing in The Salt Round. From his place at the bar he sees dozens of grinning faces, feels Katie beside him with her arm around his waist, and he knows in the unquestioning way of dreams that he has just won some important victory that everyone will respect; tonight he's a hero.

Katie raises a glass and winks at him. "Let's hear it for Ben!"

The entire bar dissolves into shouting and stomping of feet. Ben is swept up in a thousand-armed embrace of people slapping him on the back, shaking his hand, offering him drinks. The riotous energy buoys him up on a wave of noise and good will. Then, during a sudden lull, he catches sight of Claire sitting at a table on the edge of the crowd. Ben stops too, arrested by the look on her face, and Claire smiles and raises her glass. She's _proud_ of him.

"No," Ben says, and the crowd fades out of view. He knows exactly what Ian is doing, and that's not—it _is_ what he wants, but not if it comes so cheaply. He's never taken the easy way with Claire, and he isn't about to start now.

“No?" Ian echoes, and Ben shakes his head.

“Not her.”

Ian hums. “Interesting.” He waves his hand, blue fire tracing along after it, and then the floor behind Ben creaks under someone else’s footsteps. Slowly he turns.

“Hey, Ben,” says Jesse.

For a second he thinks Jesse found him—Jesse, who can do anything, managed to find his way here, into Ben’s dream, come to pull him out—but as Jesse takes a step closer, giving him that half-smile, Ben realizes this is his third wish.

“What, you’re giving me Jesse now?” He turns back to Ian, manages a laugh. “Dude, I’ve got him in reality.”

Ian snorts. “If you had him the way you wanted to have him, you wouldn’t have been off kissing _me_.”

Ben’s mouth drops open with indignation, but the landscape changes once more and suddenly it’s last night all over again, sitting in the bed of the truck with Jesse beside him and the stars overhead, except this time Jesse reaches out and slips his hand around the back of Ben’s neck, runs his thumb quick across Ben’s jaw and leans in—

“You’re sick,” Ben gets out, shoving away from the Jesse clone. Jesse lets go of him, hurt written across his face. Ben can’t help flashing back to the last time he saw Jesse in a djinn-dream. So far Ian’s given him fantasies instead of nightmares, but if Ben makes him angry—

“You don’t need to worry about this one,” says Ian, walking around the truck to stand at Jesse’s side, inspecting his handiwork. “I made a few—tweaks.”

Jesse spreads his hands, genuine happiness radiating from his sudden smile. “One hundred percent human.”

Ben swallows.

“Think about it,” says Ian. “Never having to worry that your weapons weren't made to work against things like him. Never wondering what’s going to make him snap for good. Simple.”

“You can’t just,” Ben begins, but then Jesse takes one hand in both of his.

“This is all I ever wanted,” Jesse says. “I told you that the first time we met, remember? I just want to be done, Ben, I just want to be normal. Please let me have that.”

It takes everything Ben has to stand up, swaying, and turn away from the hope in Jesse’s face. “You are not real.”

Ian jumps up into the truck bed, and Jesse vanishes. “What more do you want?” he says. “I gave you your mother. I gave you your cambion. You could have anything.”

“Why won’t you let me go, if you’re so into making me happy?” Ben’s knife is gone, lost when the scene changed; he’s powerless here. But then it occurs to him that this is his truck. Slowly, Ben lowers his hands. “What do you want?” he asks Ian, keeping very still. “Why’d you kidnap me if it wasn’t for Brigitta?”

Ian’s eyes cut away. “She would just have put us both into more danger,” he says. “It’s not good for Brigitta to be this close to you, or to Dean. She just doesn’t care at all anymore. But maybe if you’re gone...” He tucks his bangs out of his eyes, three times in quick succession. “And with an offering like this, the First will have to forgive us for failing to capture the cambion last time. It’ll keep us safe a little longer, at least.”

“Man, you really think she’s just gonna drop it?” Ben says, crouching down to sit in a way he hopes looks natural. He feels kinda bad for the guy, but most of his attention is on the weapons locker six inches behind him. “Let me tell you, I know a girl who’s out for revenge, and she about killed herself last time she was around him. I doubt Brigitta’s giving up anytime soon.”

“We were doing _fine_ ,” Ian says, pacing the short length of the truck bed. “Dean was unreachable, and you—what difference did you make without your father there to see you? Even Brigitta was starting to flag after so many years with no target.” He turns back in Ben’s direction, and Ben freezes, hand halfway to the locker.

“But now she knows we’re back,” says Ben, keeping his voice level. “And dude, she’s gonna be pissed as hell when she finds out about this.”

“I know that!” Ian stops and takes a deep breath, closing his eyes. Ben’s fingers grapple with the padlock. He can’t turn around, but without seeing the numbers he’ll never get it unlocked. Ian sinks down across from him, knees tucked up to his chest. “Why’d you have to bring them back?” he says bitterly. “Dean and our alpha both. We got along just fine on our own. We made it out of that monster prison, didn’t we? We survive. Why is she so dead set on throwing that away?”

Ben listens with only half an ear, gears churning overtime in his mind. This is his truck, so everything in it appears at it exists in his memories, like the fact that this locker is, well, locked. But they’re still in Ben’s head right now, aren’t they? If he were to imagine, very quietly, that he forgot to close the padlock this time—and behind him, Ben feels something click. Inch by silent inch, he works the locker open.

“Killing doesn’t do anyone any good,” says Ian, now talking mostly to himself. “It won’t bring her family back and it won’t get rid of her anger. Just leads to more killing.”

For a second Ben stills. He’s tried telling Claire that exact thing, but always quailed at her undimmed ferocity whenever the topic arose. There had been so much going on at Purgatory’s Gate that the two rounds she emptied into Castiel’s chest barely made it onto Ben’s radar, but with the Winchesters topside again and undoubtedly still in contact with their angel, he should be glad Claire hasn’t thrown herself into exactly the same single-minded frenzy that Brigitta has. “Does she believe you when you tell her that?” he asks.

Ian gives him a look. “Does yours?”

Then he notices the awkward twist to Ben’s shoulders, and straightens. Nothing for it—Ben can’t afford sympathy for someone who’s already kidnapped him once tonight. He pulls free the first gun his hands find and presses it to his own temple.

“Wait!” Ian yells. “You can have anything you want—I’ll let you go as soon the First has your cambion, I promise! Please just stay here until we get to her—”

“Tell me something, then.” Ben’s finger tightens. “If I’m the bait, then what’s the trap? What’s your First want with Jesse?”

Ian opens his mouth, then closes it again. Eyes never leaving Ben’s, he shakes his head.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” says Ben, and pulls the trigger.

 

* * *

 

Ben wakes up buckled into the front seat of a car going down a deserted highway at eighty miles an hour, hands duct taped together, the phantom ache of a bullet in his brain. Ian sits in the driver's seat not a foot away from him.

Ian knows as soon as Ben’s awake, of course, already spinning blue fire up his arms again. But he's alone, and has to keep at least one hand on the wheel to stop them from going off the road entirely. Ben just manages to duck out of his grasp, reaching into his boot, where his fingers land on a knife-hilt. _Yes._

He pulls the silver knife free with both taped hands and slashes Ian away. That’ll buy him seconds, maybe less; he needs to get out of this car or he’ll be right back in a dream, and this time Ian may well make it a nightmare. Without letting go of his knife, Ben reaches over and gives the steering wheel a hard yank. The car swerves dangerously.

“What are you doing!” Ian yells. He jerks the wheel back in the other direction, grabbing for Ben's knife, but he overcompensates: they cross the double yellow line, skid through the thankfully-empty lanes on the other side, and then go careening over the side of the road.

Ben has no time to brace himself, no time to grab hold of anything but his weapon. Trees rush towards them and explode in a deafening crash, then _pain_ —

He forces his eyes open. His entire body aches, and the pain in his head is sharp enough to make him nauseous. There's a bloody patch of splintered glass on the windshield where Ben's forehead must have hit. Ian slumps over the wheel, hair tacky with blood from a similar injury. It’s quiet, save an angry hissing beneath from the crumpled hood of the car.

Ben’s hands slip when he tries to unbuckle himself, blood pooling between them under the duct tape. Did he do that with his own knife? He sees where the blade fell between his feet, and nearly passes out trying to lean down and retrieve it. Dean’s training is all that allows him to reach the knife-hilt and blindly hold on. Next to him, Ian wheezes out a pained noise.

Ben hesitates, just long enough for Ian to look up.

“Sorry,” Ben says, and drives the knife into Ian’s side. Ian struggles for a few seconds against the silver's poison and then falls still.

Ben’s hands shake as he pulls the knife free again and wipes it clean on the car seat before tucking it away in his boot. He has no lamb’s blood to give Ian a true death, and he’s not sure he’d use it even if he had. But that means Ben needs to get out of here before Ian wakes up again. The door's crunched shut; Ben gathers the last of his strength and kicks at it until it opens and spills him outside.

It’s nighttime—still the same night, surely Ben hasn’t been under a whole 24 hours—and the moon gives enough light to see his way back to the road, but when Ben staggers onto the asphalt there’s no sign of where he is or which direction he should walk. He fumbles for his phone, but the cracked screen only shows one flickering bar, not nearly enough to load a map. But enough, perhaps, for a call. He hits speed dial and blinks blood out of his eyes while it rings.

“Ben?”

“Claire,” he croaks, knees gone weak with relief.

“Where the hell are you? What happened?”

There’s a pitch in her voice that he hasn’t heard in a while. He should’ve texted before he went out to hook up, he’s usually good about not letting her worry, but then again it turned out she was right to. “Another djinn,” he says. “Wanted to take me to their alpha, but I woke up. Crashed the car.” He blinks. “Got sorta beat up, but I’m out.”

“You crashed a _car_? What do you mean sort of beat up? Are you—”

Scuffling, and then another voice on the line. “Ben, take a picture of wherever you are and send it to me,” says Jesse.

“It’s dark,” says Ben hazily. “There aren’t any signs or anything, it’s just a road and some trees.”

“Just do it!”

It’s remarkably inconvenient to take a picture with his wrists taped to one another, but Ben manages it. Praying for a strong signal, he sends the blurry streetlight to Jesse before putting the phone back to his ear. “If you can’t even see what’s in it, how are you going to figure out—hello?”

But the call has dropped. Ben shakes the phone and makes a frustrated noise between his teeth. Then he hears a crash from the underbrush. He whirls, looking back toward the car that he’s not nearly far enough away from, and then a shape comes hurtling out into the light to grab him by the shoulders—

“Y’gotta stop fuckin’ doing this to me, mate,” Jesse says, and pulls Ben into a hug that drives all the breath from Ben’s lungs.

He feels a bit like the ground has dropped out beneath him, but this is nothing like the illusion Ian had offered him. There’s nothing smooth or perfect about the way Jesse’s hands dig into his sore ribs, or the rasp of Jesse’s front on his still-bleeding arms. Ben breathes in against the rip in Jesse’s shirt that Claire had put there only this afternoon, catches that familiar smell of part soap and part dust and part brimstone that means Jesse, and knows absolutely that this is real.

Jesse’s grip tightens and Ben wants to squeeze back just as fiercely, but of course his hands are still duct-taped together. “Jess,” he mutters, and that’s enough to make him let go.

“Sorry,” Jesse says, “sorry, I just—oh, Christ, you’re bleeding—”

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” says Ben, though his voice kind of gives out when Jesse ghosts a touch across the blood on his face. Jesse is _here_. “Dude. Did you just teleport?”

“Had the picture,” says Jesse absently, mouth already firming as he takes in the extent of Ben’s injuries. “Hold still.”

“Wait, first can you—?” Ben holds up his taped hands. “You would not believe how annoying this is.”

Jesse smiles. “Itch like a motherfucker, huh?” He ducks his head to pull the knife from his belt and thankfully misses the completely embarrassing grin Ben gives him in return.

Jesse half-cuts, half-rips the duct tape in two and starts to unwind it. “Watch my bracelet,” Ben warns, but too late—Jesse's fingers brush by the palo santo. He jerks back like it was a real burn, leaving Ben to finish extricating himself from the tape alone. When he looks up, Jesse’s got his hands raised, palms out, and he’s taken a step backward. Ben frowns.

“Are you okay?” says Jesse slowly. He gestures at Ben’s bloodied scalp. “It’d be best to heal that cut on your head as soon as I can, if you’ll let me.”

Ben blinks. “Why would I not let you?”

Jesse’s hands drop. “Didn’t they poison you again?”

The confusion only lasts a minute before Ben gets it: the palo santo, the reminder that Jesse’s as much demon as human, and now Jesse thinks Ben is going to be afraid of him again. Hard to explain that it’s actually just the opposite. “Uh, yeah, they did. But it wasn’t—it was a good dream.”

Surprised, Jesse meets his eyes, and Ben makes sure not to look away. “Oh,” says Jesse. “Of—? No, never mind, you don’t have to tell me. Come here.” He holds Ben by both hands and bites his lip. “I’m just gonna try to take it all at once, okay? Sorry if it hurts.”

“Go for it,” Ben says, in lieu of something terrible like _I wouldn’t mind_.

Jesse takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, but Ben doesn’t. At first he watches the skin along Jesse’s arms crack open where Ben’s is closing, the gash that rips dark under Jesse’s hair, but soon he's just watching Jesse: the flicker of pain across his features with each transfer, the determined clench of his jaw when he takes on the injuries anyway, the furrow between his brows as he bleeds for Ben gladly.

Eventually the last of the slashes seals shut and Jesse opens his eyes. “There you are.” He drops Ben’s hands. “Poison must be out of your system, so don’t worry, I didn’t see anything this time.”

“It wasn’t like—” Ben begins, but Jesse waves him off.

“Really, you don’t have to tell me.” He rubs at the drying blood on his forehead from a wound that’s no longer there. “Pretty sure I could guess anyway.” At Ben’s skeptical noise, Jesse looks up at him, challenging. “Claire, right?”

Ben shouldn’t be so surprised but it still hits him like a sock in the gut, Jesse’s complete certainty that she’s all Ben wants. And the worst part is he’s not wrong, Ben still absolutely wishes Claire would have him, but his love for Claire is a well-worn check he’ll never cash and she wasn’t the only one that Ian dangled so temptingly in front of him. Ben rubs the spot on his cheek that the fake Jesse had stroked. Would it be easier to say nothing and let Jesse keep his assumptions?

But there’s something else building in his chest, overpowering the guilt, and it feels like defiance. Why _shouldn’t_ he tell Jesse what he really thinks of him? His new whatever-it-is for Jesse hasn’t cancelled out how he feels about Claire, so why should three years’ worth of unrequited emotion keep standing in his way now he’s found someone else he wants more than one night with? He deserves the chance to try—to know, at least, if Jesse feels the same way.

“Fun story,” Ben says eventually, picking at the tape residue on his arms. “Turns out djinn can enter the dreams they’ve given you. Never knew that before.” He shrugs. “First dream he gave me was—was my mom, actually.” Jesse’s face goes stricken but Ben doesn’t give him space to interject. “Figured out pretty fast what was going on, what with all the practice I’ve been having lately. Then Ian showed up.”

“Ian?” Jesse interrupts.

Ben’s cheeks heat up a little, and he hopes the dark hides it. “That other djinn. Brigitta’s sidekick. He really wanted me to stay under, but seemed like he wanted to keep me happy anyway, I dunno. So he started offering me other things he thought I’d want.” He sucks in a deep breath and lets it out piece by piece, a burst behind every word. “One of which was you.”

Jesse goes absolutely still. “Me?”

Ben shrugs even larger this time, spreading his hands and aiming his gaze at the streetlight over Jesse’s shoulder. “In the flesh, as it were. The guy even threw in a free depowering, like you being human was gonna sweeten the pot.”

That gets a reaction: Jesse’s entire body curls protectively in on itself, but his face twists into a snarl. “I _can’t_.”

Fuck, Ben’s doing this all wrong. “Can’t what?”

“I can’t grant your wish, okay?” Jesse’s fists clench. “I _know_ you want me to be human, I know it’s only gotten worse since Purgatory, but I can’t get rid of it. Wishing my powers away was the first thing I tried when I figured out how bad they were but it just hurt like hell and nothing changed at all. And I _am_ trying to control them, we’ve done all this training and I have been getting better, I _have_ , but I’m never going to be normal, Ben, I can’t fix this!”

“I don’t want you to!” Ben takes a step toward Jesse and stops when he flinches, both of them breathing hard. “You don’t need fixing, Jesse,” he says quieter. “I told the djinn to fuck off, because I didn’t want some half-version of you swanning around acting perfect. I want the real thing.” And he meets Jesse’s eyes, dark centers in the low light, and he holds them.

Slowly, Jesse unfurls. “When you say ‘want’—”

Ben grabs him by the collar and kisses him.

Given that enlightening conversation at the bar, Ben expected some fumbling, but Jesse opens his mouth almost immediately and gives as good as he gets when Ben tugs experimentally on his lip. _Kissed a boy before_ , Ben remembers, but he has zero brain space to waste on jealousy when Jesse’s fingers are digging into the back of his head to drag him closer.

Then he smells smoke.

“Ah,” cries Jesse, stumbling several steps back and staring, horrified, at his hands. Ben rubs the hair on the back of his scalp, gone hot like it’s been baking in the noon sun. His skin buzzes. It should probably bother him more than it does.

“So you weren’t kidding about the fire thing, huh?”

“I am so, so sorry,” Jesse says, running his hand across his mouth. “I. Fuck. I shouldn’t have grabbed you like that, I wasn’t thinking—”

“I was kind of in favor of the grabbing, myself,” says Ben.

Jesse shakes his head, backing away even further, and wipes his mouth again. “We can’t. I can’t.”

“Don't you want to?” Ben challenges. He can’t believe Jesse doesn’t, not after a kiss like that, and if Jesse wants him and he wants Jesse then there must be a way past whatever else is stopping them.

Jesse gestures helplessly. “I mean I—obviously I like you, or whatever, but Ben, I _literally killed_ the last person I tried to kiss.”

Something about the way Jesse says it trips Ben’s memory: a long time ago, when Jesse’d been caught in the panic room at Bobby’s, Claire asked him whether he’d killed anybody. No, Jesse had said; nobody but the hunters who’d trussed him up in that devil’s trap in the Outback and bled him until he broke. That wasn’t a lie, and Claire would know. Now Claire’s words from earlier tonight come back to him: _he was their friend before he was their target_. Because Jesse trusts too easily, especially given what he is, and what if one of the Simms brothers was the recipient of that deadly kiss?

Jesse’s watching whatever series of expressions just scrolled across Ben’s face, and again he shakes his head. “I can’t risk it. Not with anyone. But especially not with you.” Before Ben can protest, Jesse takes a deep breath and barrels on. “Let’s just—just get to town, okay, and we can wait for Claire to come pick us up, I’ll text her where we are—” He fumbles out his phone and nearly drops it.

“Jesse,” Ben begins, but Jesse just types furiously and pretends not to hear him. Ben sighs.

“This way,” Jesse mutters, and sets off down the road, hesitating only enough to let Ben catch up.

Ben falls into step beside him, letting the sound of their feet on the asphalt stand in for his thoughts. Though the air is warm, a breeze hushes through the stands of trees along the roadside, cool against the places on Ben's skull where Jesse's fingers had started to burn.

Jesse's quiet, too, and Ben tries to imagine the state his mind is in right now. Tries to imagine being able to kill somebody by wanting them too much. But at the same time, how can Jesse resign himself to a lifetime of quashing his feelings into a strictly no-touching box? How can he be okay with never knowing what it's like to even kiss someone without having to stop—or go further than kissing, learn what it feels like to have someone peel that worn-out hoodie off him and push him against a mattress and—

"It's not you," Jesse says. "That's the line, yeah? It's not you, it's me." He finds a piece of gravel and kicks it skittering a few feet ahead of them. "If it weren't for—how I am, I'd be over the moon right now. Was not expecting you to, um. That." He rubs his mouth again.

"Really?" says Ben. "Cause I've wanted to kiss you like six times in the past three days alone, and my face is not known for its subtlety."

Jesse laughs, which is good to hear. "How'm I supposed to know what it looks like when someone wants to kiss me? I spent three years not looking at human faces at all." That thought sobers him, though, and he goes quiet again.

"I dunno," Ben says, before the silence can fully settle back in. Part of him wonders if this is better or worse than where he stands with Claire, knowing for sure his interest is returned but still being unable to act on it. "I think we could make it work."

Jesse turns to look at him. "How can it not bother you?" he says, almost angry. "Knowing I could leave you in ashes and you just shrug it off?"

"You've always been able to kill me by snapping your fingers," Ben points out. "Didn't stop us becoming friends. Besides, where's the joy in life without a little danger?" He waggles his eyebrows.

"You think I'll be able to stop myself," says Jesse flatly. "It doesn't work like that, Ben. No matter how much I _like_ you, if I lose control while you're in the blast radius—"

"You have never hurt me, not once," Ben interrupts. "Not even when you go black-eyed." Jesse gives the stone another vicious little kick, not looking at him. Ben breathes in as they reach another streetlight and doesn't let the air go until they've crossed into darkness again. "What exactly happened last time? What are you so afraid of?"

Jesse's silent for so long that Ben thinks he's not going to answer. They cross under more streetlights, light and dark, light and dark, the trees rustling on either side.

"He didn't know how I felt," Jesse finally says. A laugh. "Guess he didn't know a lot of things, actually, that's what caused all the trouble, but. With Oliver it really was just me."

 _Oliver_ , Ben thinks; Claire was right. He didn't think it was possible for him to hate the Simms brothers more.

"And I never did anything about it," Jesse continues. "Didn't think he'd be interested, same as you, and plus he was a fair bit older than me. I was just some dumb kid with a crush. Which was fine, I was fine with that. But, y'know." He rubs the side of his neck. "All went a bit tits-up after that bunyip."

When he doesn't continue, Ben says, "Wait. So you didn't actually kiss him?"

Jesse flinches. A sudden gust of wind rattles the branches beside them. "He was there at the shack, that last day," he whispers. "When I—when I got that backlash, from whatever the Queen of Hell was doing, it was just too much. I couldn't _hold_ it." He digs his fingers into the center of his chest, like he can retroactively keep all that power inside. This part of the story is familiar, but what comes next isn't: "I saw Oliver." Jesse takes a deep breath. "Everything was on fire and he, he begged me not to kill him. But I thought—I remember, even though I was outta my head, there was part of me that thought, _last chance_. So I kissed him. And he burned up as soon as I touched him."

Ben has no ready response to that. They reach a bridge that crosses over another road, feel it shake when a truck rumbles underneath in a cloud of exhaust fumes and hazy red light. Once they've crossed, Ben ventures, "But I mean, this isn't really the same, right? I mean, when that happened you'd just been tortured for weeks. He was torturing you. That's pretty extenuating circumstances."

Jesse doesn't say anything for another several paces, chewing on his bottom lip. "The point is I couldn't stop it. He asked me to stop, and I couldn't."

"Well, yeah," Ben says, "but I mean, at that point, how much did you really want to?"

Jesse stops walking. When Ben does too, worried, Jesse stares him down without a trace of fear. "I _never_ wanted to kill him," he says. "Even after everything. He didn't deserve that."

This time, Ben keeps his disagreement to himself.

They move on. Guilt nags at Ben—he doesn’t understand how anyone could defend the person who put them through hell, but it’s obvious that for Jesse things are more complicated than that. He wonders how much of Jesse still does care for Oliver, perhaps always will, no matter what came after. And what does that mean for Ben, that any sort of beginning with Jesse will be shadowed by the hunter who betrayed him?

“You know I’m not gonna do that, right?” Ben says. “I mean, you know I’m not—I’m not him.” It’s been almost three months since Ben let Jesse out of that devil’s trap at Bobby’s, but he wishes now it had been even longer, that he had even more time to point to and say _look, all these years I knew what you were, and I never let that stop me_.

The Jesse of three months ago might have hesitated, but to Ben’s relief it’s only a few moments before Jesse says, “Yeah, I know. I know you won’t.” After a moment he laughs in that way he does when something’s not actually funny. “Now Dean, on the other hand—”

“He won’t either,” Ben says, with more confidence than he feels. “I mean, he’s not your biggest fan, sure, but Dean’s not gonna hurt you for no reason. He’s not that kind of guy.”

“Being a cambion seems like a pretty good reason to most hunters,” Jesse points out.

Ben wants to argue that Dean _wouldn’t_ , but he remembers too clearly the look that crosses Dean’s face whenever he sees Jesse. Instead he says simply, “I won’t let him.”

“But he’s your dad.” No quibbling about biology—Jesse, too, understands that real family is who you make them.

Ben shrugs. “You’re my friend. And if he tried to hunt you just for being what you are, he’d be wrong, and I’d make him stop.”

Jesse raises one eyebrow. “And if he tried to hunt me down for defiling his kid?”

“I’d tell him to fuck off, I’m being defiled.” Ben grins, and some of the melancholy weight of the last half hour lifts. “You offering?”

“You’re the worst,” says Jesse, but Ben is positive his eyes land on Ben’s mouth for a minute before they flick away. That’s plenty for Ben to work with. For now he doesn’t push it, just struts a little higher as they see clustered lights ahead of them.

By their usual standards, this town is a large one, but it’s still past midnight and they don’t encounter more than the occasional car as they wander past darkened laundromats and pet stores and yoga studios. Across from a CVS, there’s a small block of grass with a tree and a bench that serves for a park, and it’s there Jesse leads them to sit down and text their coordinates to Claire again. According to Jesse’s phone, the motel they were staying in is an hour and a half away; they spent about half that time walking from Ian's station wagon to this bench. Plenty of time to kill.

Presently Jesse speaks again. "The thing is, maybe we could've worked it out before Purgatory. But now—"

"Now, what?" says Ben, grasping at this lifeline.

Jesse's mouth twitches at the eagerness of the response, but his eyes stay serious. “I killed all those hunters because I got the Queen’s power for five minutes. What do you think’s gonna happen now that I’m stuck with it forever?”

“Hey, man, we’ve been training you.” Ben shifts on the bench to be facing him. “You can already control it much better than you could in the beginning, and you’re picking up the new stuff super fast. I mean, you just fucking teleported here with my grainy cell phone pic. I’d say that’s pretty impressive.”

“Yeah, and landed in the underbrush,” Jesse points out. “And it’s not—learning how to redirect my powers into stuff like jumping, that’s different than being able to stop them being used at all. Look.” He holds out one hand, and instantly fire springs to life in his palm, curling around his fingers like a satisfied cat and casting strange shadows over his face. Jesse closes his hand into a fist, and the fire goes out. “Used to be I had to really think about it to get the fire to come out like that. Now the hard part is getting it to go _away_ again. If I stop paying attention to pushing it down, it’ll all just come spilling out.”

“Even so,” Ben says stubbornly. “The worst damage I’ve seen you do is that flat tire on my truck and a few scorched towels. I think you’ll be okay.”

“I dunno,” says Jesse, with a quick sideways glance under his eyelashes. “You’re pretty distracting.”

Ben scoots closer. “Well, then, I guess you’ll just have to practice until you’re immune to me.”

Jesse’s definitely smiling now, though he tries to hide it. “Practice, huh?”

“Lots,” says Ben, leaning in like he’s telling a secret. “Lots of practice.”

Jesse leans toward him, too, but when Ben tries to close the gap between their mouths Jesse pulls back by a fraction of an inch. “Ben—”

“Okay, _Pretty Woman_ ,” Ben murmurs. “You don’t wanna kiss on the mouth, I’ll just have to kiss you somewhere else.” And he tips his head to close his lips over Jesse’s pulse.

Jesse gasps. _Don’t leave marks don’t leave marks_ , Ben warns himself, but even without any real suction, the effect he’s having is pretty fucking awesome. It gets Ben more than he was expecting, too, to know that he’s the first person to have done this. He runs his mouth down the line of Jesse’s tendon, and enjoys the resultant shiver so much that he does it again. One of Jesse’s hands flies up and then drops again before ever making contact with Ben’s shoulder.

“You don’t wanna burn me, huh?” says Ben into Jesse’s ear.

“Kind of the whole point, yeah,” Jesse replies, sounding very unsteady indeed. Ben pulls back a little.

“Hm. Idea.”

He nudges Jesse all the way back against the backrest, then places each of Jesse's hands to curl around the metal on either side of his slightly-parted thighs. Jesse watches with a dazed sort of expression, but lets Ben move him. Ben rewards him with a smile and a peck on the cheek when he’s done. Then he shifts himself over so he’s sitting on Jesse’s lap.

“Here’s the deal,” he says, tangling his own fingers in Jesse’s hair. Such a simple thing, touch, but seeing Jesse unable to reciprocate makes him appreciate it all the more. “You keep your hands on that bench—it’s metal, so it shouldn’t be a problem. And no mouth to mouth, so if you wanna stop, just say stop, okay?”

“Okay,” says Jesse. He shifts his legs, and Ben grips his hair tighter to keep his balance; the extra tug makes Jesse’s eyes go wide. Ben leans in again.

“You find something you like, you should tell me that too,” he teases. “After all, this is for science.” And then he sets about discovering exactly how much Jesse likes getting his hair pulled while someone’s licking a hot line up the column of his throat.

It’s hard—hah—hard not to let himself dip back into that temptingly open mouth, hard to remember that he shouldn’t move Jesse’s hands again to settle them on Ben’s skin this time. He tries not to let himself get carried away, keeps a careful six inches between their hips no matter how much he wants to slide closer and turn those sporadic little twitches into a _rhythm_. Jesse stays quiet for the most part, but his breath is audibly faster now and he lets out a little yelp when Ben's hand brushes across his chest.

Examination on that subject has barely begun when Ben feels a buzz in his pocket and then hears the overenthusiastic vocals of _She Drives Me Crazy_.

“Shit.” He climbs off Jesse and answers the call, trying not to sound too out of breath. “Claire?”

"I'm about fifteen minutes out and I need to know where you are in this town," Claire says briskly. "You geniuses sent me something by text and I can’t stop to read it going 75 down the Turnpike."

"Are you in my truck? Don't crash my truck." Ben peers down the road they walked in on as though he could see Claire coming.

"How about you don't get to tell me how to drive your truck until you stop getting kidnapped," Claire retorts. He can sort of hear the engine under her voice, and it comforts him. "You would've been proud. Dean spent the first half hour trying to outpace me, but I kept up."

"Dean's with you?"

"I'm surprised you can't hear the Impala already."

Ben looks at Jesse, who's sitting forward again to listen and isn't nearly as relaxed as he had been a moment ago. But Ben stands by what he said earlier: whatever Dean's reaction is, he'll help Jesse weather it.

"Give me a street name," Claire says. "Landmarks, too; go find something conspicuous to loiter around."

"Uh, we're in a park, across from a CVS," Ben says, and does not add, _where we were making out on a bench until you called_. "Hang on, lemme check what street."

He trots to the nearest intersection, leaving Jesse where he is, and peers at the sign. "North Avenue and Crescent. North is the one we came in on, I think."

"Ah, I just saw a sign for North Avenue. Good." He expects Claire to hang up and that be the end of it, already on his way back to the bench, but after a pause she asks, "You okay?"

"Huh?" says Ben, whose plans for the immediate future greatly resemble events of the immediate past. "Oh, yeah, I'm fine. All healed up and everything." This is accurate; Claire's shard of grace can't tell her anything about what people aren't saying.

"Nothing went wrong when he jumped, did it? He wasn't exactly calm."

"No, Jesse's okay," says Ben, and Jesse looks up briefly at the sound of his name. "We're both okay." He doesn't tell her not to worry, because that would imply that she had been.

"Good." Claire pauses, as if to continue, but only says, "Probably ten minutes now. I'll call again if I don't see you."

"Got it," Ben says to a dead phone line.

Jesse's slouched forward, head bowed again, with his elbows on his knees in a position that does not invite further lap-sitting. "So they're on their way, then."

"Ten minutes, she said. Dean too." Ben shifts from foot to foot.

Jesse nods and digs his toe into the dirt under the bench. Finally his head lifts. "What are we gonna tell Claire?"

Ben's breath whooshes out as he lowers himself onto the bench next to Jesse. "Guess that depends on what we're gonna do next." Part of him is desperate to ask, _was that okay? Did you like it?_ And, _can we do it again?_ But equally strong is the need to hear what Jesse wants without suggestion or influence. The last thing Ben wants is to guilt him into something by being too needy.

"I—" Jesse bites his lip and frowns. He starts a few different sentences before finally asking, "Are you in love with her?"

"Course," Ben says without thinking. Too used to answering Claire, perhaps, but he’s never seen the point in acting like he can only like one person at a time.

Jesse's eyebrows shoot up, and then he laughs. "Well, at least I know you're not lying," he says. "So, what, if you can't have Claire—"

"That's not what this is," Ben interrupts. "You know it's not. And, dude, don't act like you're not into Claire too, because I've seen you."

Jesse looks guilty, though Ben doesn't blame him in the slightest; Claire is pretty amazing. "But at least _I_ haven't got any chance with her."

"Claire actively shot me down on like three or four different occasions," Ben says. "I mean, she told me herself not to stand around waiting for her. Said I should find other people."

"And I'm other people, I suppose," says Jesse.

Ben knocks their shoulders together. "Hey. You're not a rebound." Jesse looks skeptical, and Ben kind of wants to kiss him again. “You're not second-rate, and you’re not dangerous, man. You teleported yourself to a random highway to make sure I was okay. You’ve saved my life an embarrassing number of times. I’m pretty sure you’ve got enough juice to blow up the entire world, actually, and you use it to teach yourself knife juggling. That’s pretty good grounds for some romantic interest, I’d say.” By the time he finishes his cheeks are burning, but he adds one last crack. “Besides, have you _seen_ you?”

“Ha ha,” says Jesse, rubbing the side of his nose before leaning back to Ben’s level. He laces his fingers together. “I could, you know,” he adds quietly. “I could end the world if I wanted to. I’m not safe.” But when he turns to meet Ben’s eyes, there’s no trace of demon in his own. “Why doesn’t that scare you?”

There’s a thousand flip answers he could give. Instead, Ben simply says, “I trust you.”

Then the rumble of an engine cuts through the air, and in the flurry of Dean and Claire’s arrival, Jesse doesn’t answer.


	4. Part IV

The single upside of being so exhausted is that Ben simply doesn't have the energy to worry that sharing the bed with Jesse tonight will be awkward. Once Dean bundles them off to a motel, Ben dozes through a quick rinse to get the blood off himself and then rolls up under the covers, barely even aware of the mattress dipping when Jesse joins him. His sleep is deep and blessedly dreamless.

The next morning, over breakfast and some much-needed coffee from the nearby IHOP, Ben explains what Ian let slip about the alpha's plans.

"If they're after you on alpha's orders, they're not gonna stop," Dean tells Jesse, putting his coffee down. "Everyone you love, everything you care about, they’re all bait."

Jesse tenses under Dean's attention, but at this he raises his eyebrows. "Well, aside from these two everyone I love is dead, so. Shouldn’t be too hard to keep track of."

Ben's fingertips tingle at the word _love_ in a way he will never, ever admit to. He coughs and says, "Dean's right, though. Between the alpha wanting you and Brigitta wanting to kill Dean, we're gonna be up to our elbows in djinn."

"But they did wait until you were gone to take Ben," Claire points out. "After what happened in Philadelphia, they must be wary."

"So we just stick together from here on out." Ben catches Jesse's eye. "Shouldn't be too hard."

Dean grunts. "They'll just find someone else."

A terrible foreboding stirs to life in Ben's gut. "Like who?"

Dean takes a long swig of coffee. "Never thought I'd say it, but the kid and I are in the same boat there. It's a pretty short list." He jabs his chin toward Ben. "Sammy can fend for himself, and anyway he's in a monsterproof bunker with Cas hovering over him every minute of the day. It's you I'm worried about."

"My family is also dead, if we're taking polls," Claire says. Her spine went stiff the moment Dean said Castiel's name and it hasn't relaxed yet. Still, she stops glaring at Dean and turns to Ben. "Having you hostage kills two birds with one stone for the djinn. We should be worrying about how they'll be trying to lure _you_ out."

It's an uncomfortable feeling for Ben, looking at the other three sitting in this IHOP booth and knowing that he's the only one that does have something beyond them. His first thought is of Katie, whom he hasn't seen since Purgatory—but she's at The Salt Round with all sorts of hunters to keep a lookout, not to mention Emily and her formidable spellwork. Like Sam, Katie can look after herself.

But Ben does have family beyond the hunting world. Someone who'd never think to defend herself, because she still believes monsters aren't real.

"Marie," Ben whispers.

Claire frowns. "Who?"

Too late to take it back now, and if Ben's right, the time of keeping secrets about Marie is coming to a close. "My aunt Marie," he says a little louder, avoiding Claire's eye. "She's still in Cicero. She has no idea about any of this." His mind supplies him with the image of Marie burning up and he rubs his arms with sudden chill—and then he remembers where that image came from. "Fuck. I think I said Marie's name while I was poisoned the first time. _Fuck_."

“Lisa’s sister?” says Dean. “What ever happened to her, anyway? Why would she show up in your djinn dream?”

Claire’s keen gaze burns a hole into the side of his head. “Doesn’t matter,” Ben mumbles. He stands up, tossing his napkin onto the table beside Claire’s half-finished pancakes, and announces: "We need to go to Cicero. Now."

“I'll go to Cicero. _You're_ going to Kansas,” Dean says firmly. “You kids can hole up with Sam and Cas in the bunker while I deal with this bitch. The last thing we need is more collateral damage.”

“What?” says Ben. “Dean, I _need_ to see Marie, you can’t make me sit this one out!”

"You'd be doing exactly what they want you to do!" snaps Dean. “Running off half-cocked into a trap where you know they’re gonna be waiting for you, how's that gonna help anybody?”

“Better to risk that now than wait for some djinn to call me up saying they’ve already got her!”

“And what, you think I’d rather get that call about you? _Again?_ ”

"I owe it to her to protect her," Ben says stubbornly. Seeing Dean about to protest, he adds, “Besides, we can’t go to the bunker anyway, not while Castiel is there.”

Claire snaps her head around to lock eyes with Ben, and his stomach drops. He knows she hates it when anyone acknowledges that Castiel even exists, much less that Claire has any emotional reaction to him. Dean says, “What? Why not?” and Ben can only manage a dry swallow.

“Because of me,” says Jesse. If Ben hadn’t been watching Claire’s face so closely, he would have missed the grimace that flashes across her features at the lie. Jesse doesn’t falter, though, not even when Dean glares at him. “Angels and cambions, mate, they don’t mix well. Hunter's safe house isn't exactly safe for me.”

That wipes the scowl off Claire’s face: even though he started the lie for her sake, Jesse’s thinking of the Simmses right now, they all know it. Dean’s bunker is probably warded too tightly to even let Jesse in the door.

“That’s right,” Ben realizes suddenly. “We couldn’t take Jesse to The Salt Round, either. Or Bobby’s. They’ve all got devil’s traps.” Jesse shoots him a betrayed look, and too late, Ben closes his mouth.

Dean crosses his arms. “Then I suggest we get the humans to safety, and let the all-powerful demon kid find his own damn place to hide.”

Jesse flinches, all the fight draining out of him.

“We are not doing that,” Ben says loudly, because Claire looks murderous. “We’re _all_ going to Cicero. We’ll figure out the rest when we get there.”

And something in his tone must warn Dean off, because he says nothing as he stalks to the register and pays the bill. He leaves without them, but when they hurry out to the parking lot the Impala is still idling there, waiting for Ben. It twists something in his chest; how long has he been wishing Dean would let him take point on a hunt? This just wasn't how he wanted to get there.

"Come on," he sighs to Jesse and Claire, unlocking the truck. "It's gonna be a long drive."

 

* * *

 

About an hour into the drive, Claire says, "Who's Marie?"

Ben takes a deep breath. He's still exhausted from last night, running on bad coffee and the churn of fear in his gut, but they're going to have to have this conversation sooner or later. Maybe talking about what happened before will keep him from worrying about what's happening now.

"Marie is my mom's twin sister," he says. "She lived right across town when I was growing up, and stayed in Cicero after we moved. After my mom died, Dean dropped me off there to live with her."

"I thought you were with Dean after your mom died," Claire says. She doesn't raise her voice, but the words have a hardness to them that he hasn't heard directed at him in a while.

"I mean, I spent summers there," he says, glancing at Claire and then across behind her for Jesse's support, but Jesse just gives him a look that says, _not touching this one_. Ben turns back to the road. "Some holidays. But during the school year I lived with Marie."

"And did you get along well?" Claire presses. "Were you happy there?"

"Yeah, of course," Ben says, taken aback. Marie had done more than anyone could reasonably ask of her, taking in not just Ben, but Katie too after she got kicked her out of her mom's house. No one could possibly replace Ben's mom, but of everyone in the world, Marie came closest.

Claire turns in her seat to face him. "Then why is this the first time in three years that you've ever mentioned her by name?"

Ben chews on the inside of his cheek, and double-checks again that the Impala is still a steady presence in his rearview mirror. "So Dean disappeared when I was sixteen," he says. "I figured a monster took him. When I told Marie that..." He readjusts his grip on the wheel. "She wasn't happy."

Claire's voice is flat and merciless. "What happened."

"Well, I mean, she thought I was crazy. Wanted to get me help and all that. I knew there was no way I could convince her I was okay and still be able to find Dean, so—" He doesn't mean for his voice to drop into a mumble, but there it goes. "So I left, okay?"

Claire sits back. "You left. Without telling her."

Ben cringes. He knew, he _knew_ she'd be pissed, and he can't even defend himself because he knows exactly why: Claire's father left her in the dead of night and an angel's been wearing his body ever since. Ben wants so much for Claire to depend on him, to know that he'll be there for her no matter what, but after something like this she might never trust him again. "Look," he says, "I know it was a dick move—"

"But you didn't ever go back, did you?" snaps Claire. "We're only even going there now because you think djinn might be about to kill her. Does she even know you're _alive_?"

" _Yes_ , she knows I'm alive," Ben snaps back, because he does send Marie postcards at least once a month even if none of them have return addresses. It doesn't even occur to him that the guilty doubt churning in the pit of his stomach would make a liar of him until Claire grabs her temples and cries, "Ben, that _hurts_!"

Ben startles so badly that he nearly scrapes the truck into the jersey barriers along the side of the highway before he can straighten his grip on the wheel. His irritation abandons him instantly: if Claire’s in enough pain to sound like that, something is very wrong. "Claire?"

She doesn't say anything, and when Ben dares a glance in her direction, he sees her shaking her head with her hands still pressed against her temples, mouth pinched tight.

Ben checks the rearview mirror—Dean is still behind them, letting Ben lead for now. "You need me to pull over?"

Claire just shakes her head more firmly. Taking slow, deliberate breaths, she lets go of her forehead to settle both hands in her lap. Ben and Jesse exchange a look of alarm across her back.

“I can take it,” Jesse says, offering her his open hand. “Let me.”

Claire doesn’t move. "It’ll pass." The strain in her voice this time is something distinct from her earlier anger, and it worries him.

"What happened?" Ben asks, when she doesn’t say anything more.

She rolls her shoulders back to sit straight again, her face already composed. Her arm feels hot where it brushes against Ben's. "You know lies give me a headache."

"Not like that," says Ben, though now he's wondering if it does always hurt that much, if perhaps it was just anger lowering her inhibitions that made her admit it.

“Well maybe if you’d told me the truth in the first place, this wouldn’t be happening!”

Their exchange of life stories happened in fits and starts over the first several months of their acquaintance, and Claire had seemed as happy as Ben not to dwell on anything but what mattered for the cases in front of them. But if he'd told her the truth when they first met, he wonders—with the death of her mother still fresh on her mind and her father's abandonment that much closer to recent memory—would she even have given him a chance?

"Look," he says instead. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner, all right?"

"That's not the point," Claire says, though Ben's willing to bet the lie of omission is a big part of why she's mad; he hasn't spent three years with her for nothing. “I’m not the one you need to apologize to.”

"I know," Ben says. "I know, okay? I'm gonna freakin' apologize. The only reason I'm looking forward to this conversation at all is because it means Marie's still around to have it." Ben consciously forces his shoulders to drop and looks in the rearview mirror again. He doesn't say it, but after three years of searching together she has to know Dean is his family too; she must understand what Dean means to him. He walked out on Marie, yes, and he wishes it hadn’t happened the way it did, but to do otherwise would have meant letting Dean down. The only reason they've got the Impala behind them right now is because Ben didn't give up.

"You can't just walk out on people," Claire says, quiet. "Especially not your family."

Ben tightens and relaxes his hands on the wheel. "Claire—"

"Do not make this about me. Just don't." She stares away from him out the windshield, hands pinched tight around the tops of her knees. _You do not have a shot with me_ , she told Ben once, meaning the two of them, meaning the feelings he never really managed to hide. _I'll hunt with you. I'll even be your friend. But that's as far as I go, got it?_ Only afterward had Ben understood that her rejection was less a commentary on him and more an act of self-defense.

"I wouldn't do that to you," Ben says, almost too low to be heard.

There's a muffled _fwoomph_ from the other side of the truck, and then Ben smells smoke. "Shit," Jesse says, scrubbing the scorch mark that has just appeared on his jeans. "Sorry, sorry, it just—don't let me interrupt you—"

"We're done," Claire says, in a tone that brooks no argument.

Ben bites his tongue. He has more to say to Claire, but it will do him no good if she's refusing to hear it—and honestly, he had forgotten for a moment that Jesse could hear every word they were saying. What caused that little spurt of fire? Jealousy? But he and Claire have been doing this dance for years, and Jesse should know it doesn't affect how Ben feels about him. He tries to catch Jesse's eye between watching the road, but Jesse keeps rubbing at the burn like he can erase it through sheer power of will. An awkward silence balloons between them.

"So uh," Jesse finally says. "When we get there, what—what are you going to say to your aunt?"

There's so much to apologize for, so much she doesn't know about the last three years. Where would he even begin? "I guess we'll find out when we get there," Ben says, and pushes the truck to go faster.

 

* * *

 

Dean calls when they reach the familiar exit to Cicero, and Claire is kind enough to take Ben's phone and put it on speaker so he can maintain his death grip on the wheel. He feels like he's been holding his breath for the past twenty miles, one leg jiggling against the underside of the dash while the other keeps pushing harder on the gas. "Dean?"

"We're gonna do this careful, all right?" Dean says. "Scope the place out first, just in case you're right. We don't wanna be walking into a trap."

"Okay," Ben says. "Okay." He realizes he's in the turn lane to go to his mom's house, not Marie's, and has to cut into the traffic going straight to much honking. "Sorry, shit," he says to Dean, who fishtails into line behind him much more gracefully.

"Just keep calm, okay?" The Impala's headlights flash; it's starting to get dark again. "Park a little ways down from her house and scope it out. I'll go one block over and meet you there. Don't go barging in without me, all right?"

"Dean Winchester, advising caution," Claire mutters, but Dean doesn't seem to hear her.

"Everything'll be fine, Ben. Chances are, Marie'll be sitting down to dinner wondering who the hell is ringing her doorbell."

"And then she disowns me for being a terrible nephew," Ben says. It's a good thing his autopilot has kicked in for the right destination this time, because his attention is not at all on the complicated series of turns he has to take through this neighborhood.

"She's not going to hate you," Jesse says from Claire's other side. He sounds awfully sure of himself. "Even if she's pissed, I'm sure she still wants you back."

"What?" says Dean on the phone, and Claire says "Nothing," then pinches the bridge of her nose. Ben checks on her from the corner of his eye, but if she's in pain again, she's dealing with it in her stoic Claire way.

"We're almost there," he says, speeding up a little. "I'll see you inside, right? And bring silver."

"This is my job, kid," Dean says. "All right. See you in ten." He hangs up, and behind them the Impala peels away down a different street. Ben keeps going until he reaches Oak Hill Lane.

From the outside nothing has changed: the sensible blue house looks just as it did three years ago, the trees and shrubs in their remembered positions guarding the front walk. It's not that late, the sun only just turning pink over the gabled roof, but Marie's white Toyota already sits in the driveway and that means she should be home; that means if she doesn't answer the door that something has gone wrong.

Ben parks outside Mr. Barrymore's house and unbuckles his seatbelt. He wants to fling himself out of the truck and bang on Marie's door until she answers, Dean's instructions be damned, but an equally vocal part of him wants to turn right back around and drive away. He's still holding onto the wheel like an anchor. "See anything?" he croaks.

"Kid our age just turned the corner back there, but he didn't have tattoos or anything," says Jesse. "That lady walking her chihuahua probably isn't dangerous either. Don't see any cars hanging about where they shouldn't be."

"We would probably be _less_ suspicious if we went up to the front door," Claire points out. "If anyone is waiting for us inside, we won't be able to tell from this distance anyway."

"Yeah," Ben says, and makes up his mind all at once; impulse leads him out the truck door and across the street before the other two even realize he's going. He gets all the way to Marie's front stoop before the doubt catches up with him again, keeps him hung over the doormat with his hand half-curled.

Jesse and Claire join him a few moments later, Claire with her silver knife already in hand; Jesse, of course, is never really unarmed.

"I don't feel any demons, at least," Jesse offers. Ben nods and tries to shove the picture of his mother's black eyes out of his head. He raises his hand a little higher and stalls again.

"You said you wanted to apologize," Claire says quietly. Ben takes some comfort that she, at least, no longer seems angry at him.

He's being stupid. He needs to know that Marie is okay, and that's more important than anything she might say to him. He rings the doorbell.

No one answers, Marie or otherwise. Ben gives it all of thirty seconds before ringing again, and then, even though he heard the bell chime inside, he raps on the door with his fist. He's tall enough now to see through the sunburst-shaped windowpane at the top of the door, but it shows neither light nor movement.

"Do you have a key?" Claire asks after a moment.

"There's a spare," Ben begins, but even in saying it he realizes that he never took his own key off his keychain in all the time since he left. Would Marie have changed the locks to keep him out? "I mean, yes. Here." And she didn't—the key turns the lock perfectly.

The house is silent. Ben turns on the lamp in the entranceway and starts to kick off his shoes out of habit before considering that it's probably best he keep them on. "Marie?" he calls, moving toward the kitchen, but then Claire says quietly, "Ben." He turns. She points to the far wall, where someone has carved blocky letters into the drywall.

_YOU WILL FIND HER AT POTTER'S BRIDGE. BRING THE CAMBION._

"No," Ben says. "No, _damn_ it, _Marie_!" He pulls out of Claire's reach and takes the stairs two at a time, convinced that if he just goes back to the last place he saw her that Marie will still be there waiting for him. The rug at the top of the stairs is rumpled out of shape. When he gets to Marie's bedroom, he sees a gray blazer tossed on the duvet like she'd just been about to change out of her work clothes—he even imagines it's still warm when he touches it. But while one of her shoes is neatly placed beside the bed, the other has been flung upside down in the middle of the floor. Someone has knocked the lamp off the bedside table. Marie is not here.

"Ben?" comes Dean's voice from downstairs, and Ben turns toward it blindly, unable to speak. Footsteps thunder up the stairs. "Ben!"

Ben plucks at the blazer again, wishing for answers, and holds it up for Dean's inspection when the footsteps reach Marie's room. Dean takes in the whole room with a glance.

"She's gone?"

Ben lays the blazer down flat so it won't wrinkle, then shrugs. Nods. He knows he can't just stop talking like he did after his mom but if he opens his mouth nothing will come out except screaming.

"Ben, hey. Listen." Dean's hand comes down on his shoulder, and Ben looks up at him, feeling much smaller than he is. "We're gonna get her back, okay? We know where they took her; left us a note and everything. And we got a few aces up our sleeves."

Before Ben can ask what he means, Dean tips his head back and starts speaking to the room at large.

"Dear Castiel, who art probably in the bunker with my geeky-ass little brother, get Sam to tell you the ingredients for djinn antidote and bring them down here pronto. Oak Hill Lane, Cicero. Amen." Then he turns to Ben with a little ta-da of his hands. "See? Halfway solved already."

By the time Ben realizes this means Castiel will be arriving _here_ , and remembers what a bad idea that is, it's too late; the room shudders with wingbeats.

"Hello, Dean."

There's an indistinct cry from downstairs, and finally Ben's words come unstuck. "Claire." He clears his throat and says to Castiel, "Hey, you have to leave," but Castiel and Dean are too absorbed in each other to pay him the slightest attention.

"Sam prepared an antidote as soon as he knew what you were hunting," Castiel says, handing Dean a whiskey bottle full of thin colorless liquid. "No more than two ounces per victim—"

"Yeah, Cas, I know," Dean interrupts. "What about you? Have you found anything yet?"

Castiel shakes his head. "Sam intends to keep searching, but it appears I may be a unique case."

"Unique head case, maybe," says Dean. It's a little confusing, the way he's looking at Castiel now, because the last Ben heard on the subject was an incoherent rant about delusions of grandeur and how to banish angels. Maybe those three years in Purgatory mellowed Dean out, or he changed his mind after what went down in Centralia; in any case, the two have yet to break eye contact. "How're you feeling?" Dean asks.

"I'm fine, Dean," Castiel says, and he sounds exactly like Claire—Claire, who feels reverberations from anything holy and so must know he's here, who may well be on her way upstairs to kill him right now because Brigitta's not the only one who lets revenge override everything else.

"Hey," Ben says again, and Dean seems to remember he's there.

"Ben, can you give us a minute here?"

" _No_ ," says Ben, then immediately backtracks at Dean's incredulous eyebrows. "Look, no offense, but it's just a really bad idea to have Castiel around, okay, so can you kind of—"

"Is this about Demon Kid again?" says Dean. "What, he can't even stand to be in the same house?"

"With the power he stole from Meg, it's likely the cambion sensed my presence as soon as I reached this town," Castiel points out. "He was created to kill angels, after all."

" _Nothing_ is gonna be killing you, Cas," Dean says forcefully. "Not while I got anything to say about it. All right?"

"This is not about Jesse!" Ben interrupts. " _Claire._ You need to leave because of _Claire_."

Castiel blinks, and turns toward the bedroom door. "Claire," he says. "Of course. I should—"

"Hey, whoa, no flapping off," says Dean, grabbing the sleeve of his trenchcoat. Ben doesn't understand why the gesture seems so familiar until he remembers making that same desperate grab to keep Jesse from teleporting away from him. Dean hangs on until he's sure Castiel isn't going anywhere, then turns to Ben. "Give us a minute." This time it's an order.

Ben could stand here and argue until he was blue in the face, but Dean still wouldn't let go of Castiel until he was good and ready. Instead he turns on his heel and leaves them to it.

When he goes back down the stairs, he finds Claire digging her fingers into her temples, face drawn, and Jesse standing very close to her with his hand hovering a few inches from her shoulder. "Claire," he says quietly, but then she turns around and he takes a startled step backward, glancing quick at Ben and then away.

"What is _he_ doing here?" Claire hisses at Ben, eyes cutting toward the ceiling. She looks pale.

Ben shifts. "Dean called him." At her scornful _tch_ he adds, "I mean, he was just trying to help—Cas brought an antidote to the djinn poison."

"Oh, now he's _Cas_ ," Claire sneers. "I don't care what he's offering. He can't come."

"Besides," Jesse says, gesturing at himself. "We've already got an antidote."

"I don't know, man, he and Dean are talking about something," says Ben, but before he's done talking Claire straightens like a weight just left her shoulders.

"He's gone."

Ben relaxes too, though nothing in the air feels different to him. "See, I told you it was fine—"

"All right, kiddos, time to suit up." Dean trots down the last few steps and points at Ben. "You ready?"

"Dude, I've _been_ ready," says Ben, but his heart has started beating faster in anticipation. Soon they'll have Marie back, and any grudge she holds against him will be nothing to the fact that she's alive.

"I'll load the truck," says Claire. "Jesse, can you grab—"

"He's not coming," Dean says.

All three of them turn to look at him, Ben with a slightly queasy feeling. "What d'you mean, of course I am," Jesse says after a moment, but Dean just points to the wall.

"' _Bring the cambion_ ,'" he reads. "That sound the slightest bit suspicious to anyone else? Like maybe they got a reason for wanting him there?"

"So what?" says Ben. "We already knew their alpha wants Jesse. He can take care of himself."

"Yeah, or they'll turn him around and he'll take care of _us_ ," Dean says. "He's not coming."

"That's not fair," Ben protests, as Claire talks over him.

"Jesse wasn't affected by the djinn magic they threw at him before, not for more than a minute or two. Right, Jesse?"

"Don't think he's worried about me getting poisoned," Jesse says flatly, watching Dean. "He thinks I'd torch you the minute your backs turned."

"First rule of hostage situations is never bring in an unknown variable," Dean fires back.

"He is _not_ an unknown variable," Ben snaps over them all. "He's our friend, and he's coming with us."

"If he's really your friend," Dean says, "then he'd know better than to risk your life if you're wrong."

In the silence that follows, Ben can't help remembering the way Jesse's eyes went black—their Jesse, in real life—during that first fight in the Divine Lorraine, or how the djinn screamed as he turned them to ashes. Ben hesitates, and that's close enough to victory for Dean.

"Take a seat," Dean says to Jesse, pointing at one of the couches. "You just hang tight until we get back, and you'll hardly even know we were gone."

There's a moment where Ben thinks Jesse isn't going to back down, but then he turns away and slumps down into the soft cushions with a muttered _whatever_. Dean is not entirely successful at hiding his relief.

"Jesse—" Ben begins.

" _Whatever_ ," Jesse says again. He takes out his phone and starts fiddling with it, pointedly not looking at any of them. "Go save your aunt. Have fun."

"You heard him," Dean says, as Jesse keeps tapping away. "Time to rescue Marie."

Ben's phone buzzes in his pocket. When he pulls it out, the screen shows a new text message from Jesse: _dont worry_.

His head snaps up, though he belatedly tries to disguise the movement as a final sweep of the room. Jesse doesn't look at him. Ben's phone buzzes again, and this time he waits until Dean's looking the other way to check it.

_just play along n text me a pic when you get there  
cant let you have all the fun now can i_

Ben squeezes the phone in a rush of gratitude so strong it nearly bowls him over. Whatever he did in a past life to deserve Jesse, it wasn't enough.

"Come on, Marie's waiting," he says when he's gotten control of his voice. Claire looks at him sideways, but she's smart enough to realize something's up and not comment further.

Dean keeps watching Jesse a moment longer, then jerks his head at the door. "Let's go before we lose daylight." He waits for Ben and Claire to leave before him, keeping an eye over his shoulder the whole time, but Jesse never moves from his spot on the couch, not even when Dean finally closes the door and leaves him to think he's alone.


	5. Part V

The houselike silhouette of Potter's Bridge appears out of the dusky gloom as they round the last curve of the road that once crossed it. One of the few covered bridges west of the Mississippi, Potter's Bridge got boarded up while Ben was in high school after a twister partially collapsed its roof and western wall. Kids have left their beer cans and graffiti marks around the entrance, but the firelight Ben can see flickering between the two half-rotted pieces of plywood is no rebellious teenage party.

"Listen," Ben tells the other two in the faintest whisper. "The new bridge is about a quarter mile down the river, back towards where this road branched off. Someone needs to cross and cover the other side, keep her from getting out that way."

"I'm staying with Ben," Claire says instantly.

"Yeah, no, that'd be me," says Dean. "I've got about two decades of experience on you, and I ain't letting anything happen to him."

"You're also Brigitta's target," Claire hisses. "I've been hunting with him for three years, we already know exactly how to work together, and _you_ have a bad habit of running suicide missions, so I'm damn well better qualified to protect him than you ever were."

Dean smiles, but it doesn't reach his eyes. "Yeah, I'm sure you kids had a lot of fun. And I got no doubt you're a good shot with that thing." He gestures to Claire's crossbow. "But I'm his father, and this is my fight. I'm staying with Ben."

How many times Ben has longed to hear Dean say just that, only to wish now that they'd both just shut up? He turns to Claire, whose stubbornness can occasionally be reasoned with, and whispers, "Please just go, Claire, before we waste any more time? You're quieter than Dean is, anyway." He chooses not to point out that they know someone who could've jumped across the river and back in the time it took them to have this argument; Jesse will be here as soon as Ben sends the all-clear.

After several more seconds, Claire spins and walks back toward the road.

"C'mon," Ben mutters, before Dean can make a snide comment. They both check their crossbows in silence and creep up to the sheets of plywood over the bridge mouth, visibly loose now because someone's broken in already. Ben presses his eye ever so carefully to a hole in the wood and peers in.

Brigitta's built a fire at the center of the bridge—on concrete blocks, yes, but still spitting ash and sparks onto the wooden floorboards as the smoke escapes through the collapsed part of the roof. She's sitting with her knees up to her chest, hair tucked back, and there's a heaviness to her movements that wasn't there the last time Ben saw her. He sees now what Ian must have meant when he said Brigitta has stopped caring.

 _Looks like it's just her_ , Claire texts from the other side of the bridge. (Ben's willing to bet she got there faster than Dean would have.) _Want me to distract her?_

 _Wait for Jesse._ And speaking of whom—Ben snaps a picture of the bridge’s entrance while Dean isn’t watching and dashes it off, trusting Jesse to know what it means. Inside, Brigitta stirs the fire, apparently lost in thought, then holds her own arm up to its light. She seems to be watching the curl of tattoos wandering across her skin. It reminds Ben of Claire, suddenly; how sometimes, when she's lost in thought, she'll scratch one fingernail along her legs in the same patterns as the Enochian letters she once carved there. With Brigitta quiet like this, he can almost feel sorry for her.

But then Ben sees the unconscious body at Brigitta's feet, the smart gray suit and the dark curls in disarray and the absolute slackness of the muscles. Marie, bound and drugged and left lying in the dirt like a sack of potatoes, because Brigitta doesn't know when to call it quits. Fresh anger pulses through Ben's veins, braces him up, and he raises his crossbow. He can take care of this whole problem right now with one little bolt of silver, already laced with lamb's blood. He angles the bow through the gap and sights on Brigitta. Jesse will be here at any minute.

Almost without conscious intent, Ben pulls the trigger.

“Ben!” Dean hisses, but the bolt is already flying.

The shot goes wide and Brigitta ducks at the sound of it hitting the wall behind her, comes up clutching Marie’s limp body in front of her like a rag-doll shield. Ben throws his shoulder against one of the plywood sheets and forces it open enough to squish through, but then he draws up short. Brigitta holds a pistol against Marie’s head.

“Shoot again,” she says, “and I’ll kill her.”

It only takes a split second to make his choice. “It’s me you want,” Ben says, talking quickly while Dean is still struggling to get in. There’s no movement from Claire’s side of the bridge yet, either. “She did her job to get me here. Let her go.” And Ben drops his crossbow.

Brigitta’s eyes narrow. Just as Dean works himself free of the plywood to enter the bridge, Brigitta hurls the unconscious Marie toward him. The noise from Dean sounds a lot like “Lisa!” as he moves automatically to catch her, and while Dean’s arm are occupied, Brigitta grabs Ben himself to hide behind, twisting his arms behind his back in a single painful grip while the barrel of her gun kisses cold on Ben’s temple.

"Too bad your cambion isn't here," Brigitta hisses in Ben's ear. "I knew you wouldn’t bring him if I told you to. You hunters are so predictable."

"Wait for it," Ben growls, struggling to elbow her in the gut. Brigitta shakes him like a dog with a rat and Ben subsides, for now, because all he needs to do is wait for Jesse to arrive.

“Dean Winchester,” Brigitta says, her voice gone high; Ben can feel her quivering with excitement. “How nice to finally see you again.”

Dean lays Marie down with deliberate care and then steps over her body, crossbow pointed just left of Ben’s ear. "Wish I could say the same. What's your damage, huh? You got a problem with somebody, you take it up with them; you don’t go after people's families!"

"What’s my _damage_?” Brigitta takes the gun off Ben and shoots Dean in the thigh. While he stumbles, she yanks Ben closer in front of her and puts the gun back to his head, talking louder to be heard over Dean’s swearing. “What about my family, huh? My father, my brothers, they’re all dead because of you!”

Dean moves toward her, heedless of the blood seeping down his leg. “Let him go.”

“You take another step, I’ll put a bullet in his head,” says Brigitta, digging the hot gun-barrel into Ben’s skull, and Ben’s heart rate jumps up another notch. Where is Jesse? “Maybe you’d better hope I do. It’d be faster than what I’ve got planned.”

“Sweetheart, you don’t wanna know the ways I can make you hurt if you try it.” Dean does stop moving, but his smile is a razorblade.

“Torture,” says Brigitta, “right. I hear you’re quite the expert.” She leans forward against Ben’s back, the heat of her breath crawling along his neck. “You think you can claim any kind of moral high ground here? You saw me in that prison. I begged you for help. _You_ , even after what you did. But you just walked away.” She gives Ben’s pinned arms a yank, and Ben hisses. “What kind of monster does that make you?”

“He’s just a kid,” Dean says. “If it’s me you want, come on and let’s settle this. I’ll even let you take the first swing.”

Brigitta’s grip tightens. “I survived,” she says. “I had to find a way to keep my brothers safe after our father was gone and I had to see your hunting goons kill them too. You sent your angel to wipe out every monster in Crowley’s collection, but I still made it out.” She draws a shaky breath. “I had to live, after everything. Now you’ll have to live knowing that everything I’m gonna do to him is your own fault.” Blue flares in Ben’s peripheral vision, the flame of another nightmare, and Ben closes his eyes, already dreading what he’ll see when he opens them.

"Don't!" someone yells, and the plywood barrier at the other end of the bridge squeals open.

Ben sags, triumph and relief leaving his muscles limp, until Brigitta's sharp gasp becomes a word: "Ian?"

Claire shoves Ian forward into the firelight, her knife at his throat. The silver blade is already stained red, but not from any wound of Ian's; the lamb's blood means that this time, if Ian gets stabbed, he won't be waking up.

"Don't," Ian says again. Dean turns his crossbow on this newest intruder, but Ian’s attention is only for one person. "Brigitta, please, just let him go."

"What are you doing here?" Brigitta says, her grip spasming on Ben's pinned arms. "I thought you'd gone crawling back to the First."

Ian shakes his head, heedless of Claire's knife. "I followed them," he says. "I—I picked up their trail, after we fought. I thought that if—"

“You thought what? Thought you just wouldn’t tell me?” Brigitta uses Ben’s entire body to gesture in Marie’s direction without letting go of Ben or the gun. “You’re the one who wants to avoid collateral damage. I wouldn’t have needed her if I’d known where this one was!”

“And I didn’t tell you where he went because I knew you’d do _this,_ ” Ian says. “Look around you, Brigitta; how do you think this is going to end?”

Claire meets Ben’s eyes over Ian’s shoulder and blinks twice, slowly. _Truth._ But Ian had been asking a question, not stating something; what can she mean by that? Ben frowns, and Claire points her eyes at Ian, then blinks twice again.

“I’ll tell you how it’s going to end,” Ian continues, when Brigitta doesn’t say anything. Ben can feel her shifting from foot to foot behind him. “You kill Ben. Fine. You’ve broken Dean Winchester’s heart, you’ve crushed his spirit, he knows your pain.”

“Be the last thing you ever did,” Dean growls, but Ian just nods like Dean made his point for him.

“What next, Brigitta? You think that human shield will do you any good once he stops breathing? You’d have a silver dagger through the heart before you had time to drop the body. If not from Dean, from this one.” He glances down significantly at Claire’s arm still holding a knife to his jugular.

Brigitta’s voice is hoarse. “How do you know I’m not quicker on the draw?”

Ian moves like he’s trying to reach her, but the knife draws him up short. “Imagine you are,” he says. “Let’s say you kill all three of them without getting hurt yourself. Let’s even say she doesn’t slit my throat the minute you try, so I make it out too, if that’s still a concern for you.”

“Ian,” Brigitta starts, but he talks over her.

“But then what? Did you forget that Dean Winchester has a brother? That he has an _angel?_ Or that the boy you've got a gun on right now has a cambion that nobody knows how to kill?" Ian stares at Brigitta with an earnestness that pains Ben with its familiarity. "Even if both of us make it off this bridge, we'd spend the rest of our lives on the run, and they wouldn’t be long. It's not worth it."

The gun on Ben's temple slips a little, but Brigitta soon hitches it back into place. "It's too late for pacifism. He'll kill me just for getting this far; at least I have the chance to take him down with me."

Dean gives her a nasty smile. "Let Ben go, and maybe we'll see what happens."

“Dean, drop your weapon,” says Claire suddenly.

Ben and Dean both turn to gawk at her, though Dean’s crossbow doesn’t waver from where he’s got it aimed right between Brigitta’s eyes. “Excuse me?”

“If she thinks you’ll shoot her the second she lets Ben go, she’ll never do it.” To Brigitta she says, “We put our weapons down, we let you go, and you let Ben live. Deal?”

“This isn’t a goddamn negotiation!” Dean interrupts, before Brigitta can respond. “God, I thought you two were hunters. We put the monster down, end of story.”

“ _Listen to me_ ,” Claire says, and to Ben’s astonishment, she lets go of Ian, who swipes the lamb’s blood off his neck but otherwise doesn’t move. “She’ll kill him. She’s going to kill him and it’ll be your fault, just put the crossbow down!”

“No!” Dean swings the bow over to sight on Ian, then just as quickly seems to decide Brigitta’s still the larger threat and swings back. “Why the hell should I trust these djinn to their word? She just said she wants to kill all of us and you think I oughta give her free range?”

"Dean," says Ben. At the reminder that he's more than just a prop, Brigitta twists his arms again, but Ben grits his teeth and says: "Dean, she’s right, those bolts aren’t fast enough to stop her pulling the trigger even if you shoot first, we have to do something else."

“I am _not_ gonna let you die,” says Dean, and Ben thinks: _like you didn't let my mom_?

Instead he says, “Dean. Please. You gotta stand down.”

Dean readjusts his grip, shifts his weight off his still-bleeding leg. His face is going pale. “Like hell.”

“Brigitta,” Ian warns, perhaps seeing something in her face that Ben isn’t privy to, but he does feel the decisive tightening of Brigitta’s hold and the way she tips his head back just a little. Desperate, Ben makes eye contact with Ian instead.

“You better make up your mind fast,” he says, letting Dean’s growl go unanswered for the moment. “Jesse’s gonna be here any minute, and he’ll remember you from last time, if he sees this—what?”

Because Ian is shaking his head. “He’s not coming.”

The air seems to freeze in Ben’s lungs.

“What do you mean, he’s not coming?” Ben asks, and in the time it takes him to get the words out, Claire’s grabbed Ian again and has her bloody dagger jammed under his chin, this time like she means business.

“What did you do to him?” she says.

Ian’s voice doesn’t falter when he answers, “Ask Dean Winchester.”

And with a horrible sense of clarity, Ben turns, to see Dean looking guiltily away. “Dean. What did you do.”

“Look, whatever, it’s temporary, okay?” Dean says. “You saw that note. I wasn’t about to hand him over to some djinn to turn on the rest of us. I’ll break it as soon as we get back.”

“Break it,” Ben repeats.

“The cambion is trapped,” Ian says in a low voice. “I saw him in the house, fighting thin air.”

Claire lowers her knife, steps away from him. “You’re telling the truth,” she says. Ian nods.

“Oh come on, what’s the big deal?” Dean says, though he’s not meeting anyone’s eyes now. “It’s not like I hurt him.”

Ben’s limbs have gone numb. He shoves his body forward, only dimly aware that Brigitta lets him go, because all his attention is focused on Dean. “You son of a bitch.” He’s walking straight into Dean’s line of fire, exactly how Dean always taught him not to, and he couldn’t care less. When Ben’s two feet away, Dean is finally forced to drop the crossbow, but Ben doesn’t stop until he’s all the way in Dean’s space and shoving Dean in the chest. “You fucking idiot! Why would you do that, huh? How could you possibly think that was a good idea?”

“I knew he’d follow us here, I couldn’t risk it,” Dean says, but Ben just shoves him again, even angrier to feel the prickle of tears at the corners of his eyes.

“You’re just like them! You’re just like the fucking Simms brothers, you throw him in a trap just because you can’t possibly believe that he might be _good_! What were you gonna do when we got back, huh? See if you could find a way to kill him that the Simmses hadn’t already tried? Were you gonna torture him too?”

Dean steps back, unsteady on his bleeding leg. “Someone tortured him?”

“For weeks,” Ben says viciously. “First they ran him down across the whole motherfucking desert and then they stuck him in a trap and chained him up and went to town. You know why, Dean? Because he saved one of them. He fucking saves someone’s life, and you use it as an excuse to leave him in his worst nightmare.”

He has to stop talking because his mouth is shaking too badly to continue. Dean doesn’t say anything.

“I promised him you wouldn’t,” Ben says, hating how small his voice sounds. “Dean. You’re supposed to be better than this.”

“You know, I kind of like this more,” says Brigitta from the sidelines. Ian shushes her, trying to pull her away, but Claire has the presence of mind to scoop up Ben’s abandoned crossbow and stop them before they leave.

“Don’t ever come back,” she says. “For any of us. Swear it.”

“We won’t,” says Ian, but Claire keeps the bow trained on Brigitta. In the pause that follows, Ben becomes intensely aware of his own breathing, how it’s fallen into sync with Dean’s. He deliberately holds his breath to break their rhythm.

“Fine,” Brigitta snaps, and adds to Dean, “Ian’s right. You’re not worth it. You betrayed yourself, how does that feel? Hope you enjoy knowing your son hates you now.”

Dean starts to raise his crossbow again, but Ben shoves it down without looking at him.

“Say it,” says Claire, unwavering. “Say you have no intention to harm us at any point in the future.”

“What is this, a crossroads deal?” Brigitta spits on the ground. “I have no intention of wasting my time on any of you anymore.” She bares her teeth and adds, “Can’t make any promises about what the First is doing to your cambion, though.”

“We’ll go,” Ian promises. “Thank you. We’re going.” He catches Ben’s eye and adds, “I’m sorry. About before.”

“Yeah, me too,” Ben mutters, looking away. He hears rather than sees it when the two djinn wrench the plywood entrance open again and make their escape.

“Ben,” says Dean, but Ben shakes him off. He presses the heels of his palms against his eyes until he stops feeling like he’s going to start bawling.

“Marie first,” he says, when he can trust his voice. “She needs the antidote, and maybe the hospital. You should get your leg stitched up, too.” He gestures at Dean’s dark-sodden jeans; any guilt over the injury is a distant annoyance at best. “As soon as Marie’s awake, we go back to Jesse. We _let him out_ , I don’t care what state he’s in. And the rest we’ll just deal with as it comes.” He rubs his eyes again—without the immediacy of his anger, there’s nothing left to hold him up.

Dean does seem to know when more talking won't do him any good. He goes to Marie, limping a little, and sits down next to her despite how his leg makes him wince. Much as he doesn't want to be near Dean right now, Ben kneels at Marie's other side, and when Dean catches his eye he knows they're both thinking of the same thing: Ben's mom, lying between them in blood-soaked clothes, slowly going cold. Marie doesn't move when he lifts her arm into his lap, and Dean is gentle as he feels for the vein before sliding the syringe of antidote in.

Marie's eyelids flutter. "Marie?" Ben says desperately, and she opens her eyes.

"Ben?" she says muzzily. "I thought I woke up."

"You are, you are awake," he says, holding her shoulders as she struggles upright. Dean backs away to give them space. "It's me. I'm here."

Marie frowns up at the collapsed roof of the bridge. "Where—" She rubs her eyes, then looks down at her hands covered in dirt. Then she looks at him a second time. "Ben?"

"Yeah," he exhales, tears pricking his eyes even as he grins fiercely. "Yeah, I'm here. You're okay."

"Oh my God, _Ben_ ," says Marie, and her grip is weak from djinn poison, but Ben holds on tightly enough for the both of them.

 

* * *

 

It’s not quite that simple, of course. Marie is not the kind of woman to take kidnapping lightly, and she frowns at Ben’s explanation that Brigitta tried to hurt them because she’s a monster.

“People aren’t monsters, Ben,” she says, helping him balance the limping Dean as they hop-step back toward the Impala. “They do cruel things, or make bad choices, but that doesn’t mean—"

“This ain’t a metaphor, lady,” Dean grunts from between them. He's starting to look pale and he can't seem to balance so well. Ben is still angry at him, but seeing how much blood has soaked through Dean's jeans gives him a twinge of panic nonetheless. “Brigitta and her buddies are actual, literal, don’t-belong-on-this-earth monsters. Djinn, to be exact."

“ _Gin_?” Marie repeats.

Ben sighs. “It’s another word for genie,” he says. “But the wishes go bad. Didn’t you notice anything strange about her? Blue fire, glowing eyes, tattoos that move?"

Marie stops short. Ben’s seen that look on a hundred different people’s faces: it’s the expression of a rational human being trying with all their might to deny what their senses have told them. “How did you know about that?"

“You were having a nightmare, right?” He props Dean against the trunk, not as gently as he might have, to let Dean dig out the first aid kit. "Like your worst fear coming true, except it felt real, and you couldn't get out of it."

"No," says Marie. "No, I dreamed that—that you'd come home."

Ben falls silent as he realizes two things: first, that Brigitta had given Marie a good dream instead of a nightmare; second, that Marie's deepest wish was for _him_.

Marie rubs her hands one over the other, staring back at the bridge. "This is real, isn't it?" she whispers. "I don't know if I could stand it if it weren't. I miss you so much, Ben, every day—never knowing where you are, if you're even alive—"

"I am alive," Ben says fiercely, catching Marie’s hands in his own. "I'm real, and I'm here, and I—I'm sorry that for so long I wasn't." He squeezes before letting her go, then takes a deep breath. “I shouldn’t have run away. I was mad that you didn’t believe me, and I needed to know what happened to Dean, but I shouldn’t have left like I did. You deserved better than that.” He wipes his nose. “I know you didn’t want kids, and you didn’t have to take me in but you did, and—”

“Oh, Ben, no,” Marie says, and she pulls him into a hug. “I would’ve taken you in no matter what, because I love you, okay? I was there when you were born and I loved you as soon as I saw you. Don’t ever think I didn’t want you.”

Ben buries his head in her shoulder, so much like the hug his mother gave him in a dream, and just holds on for a while.

Claire clears her throat. “Jesse’s not answering his phone,” she remarks, giving Ben plenty of time to wipe his eyes before she looks at him. "Brigitta and Ian seemed awfully sure their alpha was going to be there."

"Then let's go," says Ben. He sniffs and blinks a few times. "Dean, will you be okay for the next half hour?"

"Um, shouldn't we go to the hospital?" Marie interjects, gesturing toward Dean's bleeding leg, but Dean waves her off.

"Won't be the first time I've stitched up my own bullet wound," he says. "She didn't even hit any of the fun stuff. Piece of cake."

Ben helps Dean into the back seat, where he pulls scissors from the first aid kit and begins cutting a square out of his jeans around the bullet hole. Marie watches with trepidation.

"He'll be fine," Ben tells her, against the voice in his own head saying Dean's lost an awful lot of blood. But he doesn't have time to worry about that now. "Look, those two in the bridge, they weren't the only ones. We think their boss might be back at your house. And they have one of our friends."

Marie looks Claire over for the first time, and Claire straightens under the scrutiny. All she says is, "Then I guess we'd better hurry."

Ben commandeers the Impala's keys from Dean and peels off down the road back to Marie's. Beside him, Claire pulls out the iPad and begins typing intently—doing research or communicating with someone, he's not sure. For a while the only sound in the car is Dean swearing while he stitches up his own leg.

“So have you been with Dean this whole time, then?" Marie asks after a particularly colorful outburst. She does not sound impressed.

"He's only been back a few months, actually," says Ben. "Long story." It feels wrong to tell her everything that happened without Jesse here to claim his due, and Ben’s mind sticks on the memory of Jesse getting trapped in the panic room at Bobby’s all those months ago. He made it out of that trap with no damage to any of them—will they be able to say the same this time?

"Man, the scenery may be nicer up here, but this part I did not miss," Dean puts in. Ben hears a ripping of surgical tape, and Dean grunts.

"Up here?" says Marie. "Did you go somewhere else?"

Dean huffs. "You could say that."

"I'm sorry to interrupt," Claire breaks in, "but can everyone stop speaking English for a while? I need to concentrate."

Ben glances away from the road to see Claire's fingers flying over the screen of the iPad. "You found something?"

"It's the spell, the one from the story," she says. "If the alpha's got Jesse, we need a way to get him back."

"You think a little spell is gonna work against an alpha?" Dean says through his teeth.

"No one asked you," Ben snaps, but the tension in Dean's voice worries him. Dean must be done stitching himself up by now, but Ben can't examine the damage while he’s driving. At least the injury will keep him in the car and away from Jesse during their rescue.

"Actually," Claire says, sounding even less pleased than Ben, "we're going to need his help."

"What? Bullshit!" says Ben. He ignores Dean's indignant _hey!_ from the backseat, keenly aware of how much he would have valued Dean's presence if this had come up only a few hours earlier. "You said the original djinn got captured by just one guy!"

"Okay, first off, that spell was cast by an extremely powerful sorcerer, which you and I are not," Claire says. "Secondly, this spell is written in three voices! I have no idea how one person could have pulled it off because you have to say all the parts _simultaneously_ , see these marks?"

They reach a red light, and Ben peers over at the screen. "I can't _read Arabic_ , Claire, how the hell am I supposed to do magic in a language I can't even speak?"

"I'll transliterate." She turns toward the back seat. "Do you have anything to write with in this car?"

"Do I look like Sam to you?" Dean says, but Claire is already rooting through the glove compartment. With a triumphant sound, she pulls out a sheaf of what look to be news printouts from old cases and a pen covered in bite marks. The light turns green.

"This is a bad idea," Ben says. "alpha or not, do you really want to see what happens when Jesse sees Dean again?"

Marie, forgotten in the back seat, offers: "If you need someone other than Dean—"

" _No_ ," Ben and Dean chorus. Ben feeds the Impala a little more gas and glares at the road ahead. "Marie, this is going to be dangerous, okay? We're not even really sure how dangerous. You don't know enough about this stuff to keep yourself safe so it's better for everyone if you just stay in the car, okay?"

After a minute Marie says, "I want a gun."

"What?" Ben glances at her in the rearview mirror, but she doesn't appear to be joking, chin high and eyes firm. "Do you even know how to use one?"

She nods. "Lisa taught me."

Ben turns nearly all the way around before he feels the car start to drift and corrects himself. " _Mom_ knew how to use a gun?"

This time Dean is the one to answer. "I taught her that." His voice sounds pained, and maybe it’s just his leg wound talking, but Ben likes to think that it’s regret—that Dean misses her as much as he does. "She said if anything ever came for you or her, she wasn't gonna wait for me to get back and kick its ass."

Marie laughs a little. “She told me, for a defense lawyer, I sure didn’t know much about defending myself. She seemed so serious that I went along with it, but I didn’t understand why.” She gets quieter. “I guess now I do.”

Ben boggles silently, staring at the path of the headlights ahead of them without seeing it. He’s always made such a clear delineation in his mind between _Mom_ and _hunting_ , his life before she died and his life after she died, that to learn she had also taken up arms against evil seems like a contradiction in terms.

"She'd be proud of you," Dean says suddenly. "Your mom. She'd be proud of what you did back there."

Ben frowns. "Mom didn't want me hunting." It's always twinged in the back of his mind, the knowledge that she would've hated to see him living this life. If things had gone a little differently, Ben would've had that fight with his mother instead of Marie.

"You saved her sister," Dean points out. "And yourself. You got everyone out of that bridge without any killing at all, and that's—no way would Lisa fault you for that."

After a moment Marie speaks. "If I may use my twin powers for a moment." She touches the back of Ben's head, the same way his mother had in the dream. "I know Lisa would have been glad to see the person you turned into, Ben. I am."

When Ben dares to look, Claire is watching him too, her face almost like it was in his dream. But this is reality, so she looks down soon after, burying herself once again in her research; if she agrees with Marie, she’ll never say so. Maybe she’s just missing her own mother. “Thank you,” Ben croaks, and lets the ever-faster hum of the wheels say the rest.

 

* * *

 

The wind picks up behind them as they reach Marie's neighborhood, pushing them double-time towards the cloudbank gathered right over Oak Hill Lane. The night had been clear when they left, but if the tossing trees and dropping air pressure are any indication, this one's gonna be a doozy.

"Still got our crossbows?" Ben asks as they get close.

"Locked and loaded," Dean confirms. "After all that, you only actually fired on Brigitta once." Ben wonders if Brigitta and Ian are back at the house right now, waiting for them with the alpha—but somehow he doubts it. Brigitta seemed genuine when she declared her quest a waste of time, and all Ian cared about was getting her out of harm's way.

Claire, copying down her spell on the backs of three separate pages, seems to scribble faster with every gust that rattles her window. Ben pulls the car over on the corner of Oak Hill Lane just as she finishes the final copy, her normally-neat handwriting all shaky from the ride over. She hands one each to Ben and Dean with a brisk, "Here."

Ben squints at the foreign syllables. He's never been good with words, and without the familiarity of English, none of the jumbled letters want to stay in their places. "I hope this works."

"You'll be fine," Dean says, and opens his door. “Let’s go.”

Easy for him to say: Dean doesn't mix up whole entire words in the language he supposedly speaks. Ben scans the page once more before refolding it and shoving it in his pocket to climb out after him. At least it's a short spell.

Marie's house stands still and somber against the stormy sky. The storm is much louder here, lightning jumping from cloud to cloud in bright flashes without ever hitting the ground, thick green lawns undulating like waves under the wind in every direction. It reminds Ben too much of the way the fog in Centralia had condensed into a spiraling thunderhead of Jesse’s power made manifest, just before the sky caught fire.

"C'mon," Dean says to Marie, limping towards the trunk. He has to raise his voice a little to be heard. "I'll hook you up with some silver bullets. Won’t kill ‘em without lamb's blood, but aim for the head and they’ll drop a good long while."

" _Lamb's blood_ ," she repeats in disbelief, hair whipping across her face. "Who are you, Moses?" But she follows him back to the Impala’s arsenal anyway.

Ben catches sight of Claire, lingering near the front of the car with her arms folded close to her body, turned into the wind. She looks—smaller, somehow, and it makes him pause.

"He'll be okay, right?" he says, trying to reassure them both. "Jesse's always okay."

Claire's shoulders jerk like he hit her. "You don't really believe that."

And in this moment, helpless and exhausted, Ben doesn't. He can't imagine how Jesse, who has already been through so much, can withstand being trapped once again in a nightmare—one that waking up won’t help him escape.

Claire lifts her chin. "Well, I do," she says. "If Jesse was able to fight off whatever those first djinn threw at him, and keep his head even when we thought you were—I mean, if he can keep a lid on _all the powers of Hell_ , he's capable of enduring this too. This is exactly why we've been training him all this time."

"Didn't train him for this." Ben's seen the raw fear on Jesse's face whenever devil's traps are so much as mentioned, and Jesse's body may be more than human but the kid inside it can be broken as easily as anyone else.

Claire stares defiantly at the dark house. "He's stronger than you give him credit for."

 _Careful_ , Ben almost says, _or people will think you're the one that's in love with him._

Dean slams the trunk shut, startling them out of their moment, and hands Marie the keys. The jar of lamb’s blood is tucked under one arm. "Be careful," he tells her.

Marie looks at Ben across the car. "You too." Ben nods back, and doesn't take his eyes off her until she gets in the car and locks all the doors, her silver-bullet gun in her hand.

The wind tears at their hair and clothes, thunder rumbling close overhead as they shoulder their crossbows and approach the house. Everything looks eerie in the flashbulb illumination from the lightning overhead, but there’s something else—

"There!" Ben jostles Claire’s elbow. “Did you see that?"

"What?" Dean asks.

It happens again: a faint blue glow through the downstairs curtains, so dim it might be mistaken for a flickering television—but there’s no one home.

"Where'd you trap Jesse?" Ben demands. The wind sweeps debris across the ground at his feet.

"Living room," says Dean. He's frowning down at his spell-sheet. "Drew it on the floor upstairs before we left."

Of course. That must have been why Dean shooed Ben away so insistently—not to talk to Castiel, but to make sure Jesse wouldn't be going anywhere. Ben looks back at Marie, exiled to the car, and thinks how much she would hate to know her own house was being used to hold someone prisoner.

"We'll go in through the kitchen, then," Ben says, as a muttering of thunder comes from above. Rather than darkening, the sky has actually gotten lighter, trapping the streetlights beneath in an orange glow. "See what’s happening, scope the place out."

“Give me the blood,” Claire orders Dean. To Ben she explains, "I think we should use the jar as the object of the spell."

"What,” says Dean, “you don't think Marie's got any lamps in her house?"

Claire's expression holds a lot less patience than it might have if Ben asked that question. "The oil lamp in the story wasn't chosen for its ability to give light," she says. "It was a vessel—I mean, a container. Something the djinn could be trapped inside. Such as a jar." She folds her copy of the spell in a precise line without looking at the paper; she’s probably already memorized it. "If we're exceptionally lucky, trapping the alpha in lamb's blood might even be enough to kill it."

"I don't care about killing it as long as Jesse's safe," Ben says. "He's been stuck in that trap for over an hour, and that blue light means nothing good. Let's go."

“All yours,” says Dean, and shoves the jar into Claire’s arms.

While this entire situation is all Dean's fault, he does prove useful in picking the lock about twice as fast as Ben could've, and quieter at that. Ben starts forward as soon as he hears the click, but Dean pushes two fingers into Ben's chest to hold him back and eases his way over the threshold before them.

As soon as they get inside, Ben hears Jesse's voice coming from the living room. He's slurring something too low to make out, but whatever it is there's a cadence to it, like the words are repeating themselves. Ben moves immediately toward the sound, and this time it's Claire who has to stop him, tugging his shoulder with one hand while the other points to a shadow in the dining room cast by blue light.

Painfully slowly, placing every step with the utmost caution, Ben edges along the wall to get a better look.

The first thing he notices is Jesse, trying to back away from something through air that won’t let him pass. His hands aren't tied, but Jesse seems to think otherwise, keeping his wrists crossed and occasionally jerking his arms like he's trying to move them apart but doesn't realize there's nothing to stop him. His phone lies face-up on the floor, well outside the invisible wall he’s struggling against. Ben turns, just a little, and sees what Jesse is cowering away from.

There's no question she's an alpha. Tall, with dark skin and strong shoulders, the djinn's First has tattoos across every part of her body, even her bare scalp. The lines glow blue in patterns too complex for the eye to follow as she reaches out to brush her fingers across Jesse's forehead, fire trailing in their wake.

"Don't," Jesse says, distinct enough to be heard. "Please, it's gonna spill out, I can't—"

"Shh," she whispers, and Jesse's voice drops back down to a mumble. She's doing something to Jesse's neck, her movements hidden by the angle and his shaggy hair, but when she moves away Ben sees a bag of blood in her hand. A thin plastic tube dangles from Jesse's throat. As he watches, the alpha leans down and catches the dribbling red on her tongue.

Ben backs away, pressing his hand hard over his mouth to keep from crying out in horror. He rejoins the other two and hisses, "Spell. _Now._ "

There's a sudden crash of thunder. Dean draws a knife and beckons Claire to uncap the jar, coating his blade in red. Lamb's blood drips on the tile floor. Together they creep back into the dining room, Ben and Dean both clutching their spell-sheets while Claire holds the open jar ahead of her, and cross into the living room just in time to see the alpha take another sip from Jesse’s vein.

"Ready?" Claire wastes no time. "Three. Two. One. Go." Then, seamlessly, she starts in on the incantation, its foreign syllables rolling clear and steady off her tongue. A beat later, Dean's voice joins in rougher below hers.

Ben scrambles to catch up. He's pronouncing everything just as it's written, as unambiguously phonetic as Claire could make it, but even to his own ears the words sound hopelessly American, flat and clumsy and nothing at all like the musical rhythm Claire's found. The knowledge that it'll be his fault if this doesn't work only slows him further as he stares intently at every word to make sure he gets it absolutely correct.

He's only a third of the way down the page when the alpha holds up a hand. Ben looks up to see her eyes glow blue, and then beside him Claire yelps and jumps backward, dropping the jar. Blood spills out across the hardwood floor and soaks into the rug.

"Where did you learn those words?" says the alpha, her voice like a desert wind.

Claire shakes out her hands and says, “Let him go.” The alpha asks her something in Arabic. Claire responds in the same language, not tripped up in the slightest, then says again in English: “Let him go.”

"Not all of us are as easy to command as angels, little girl." The alpha crosses back into the trap and gives Jesse another dose of fire, making him cry out. "Shouldn't yours be here by now? The stink of grace is all over you; the binding you cast must have been very tight."

"You did what?" Dean says, looking at Claire.

"I didn't bind him." Claire's face has gone pale. "He can't see me. I made sure."

The alpha smiles, red-mouthed. "Then tell me, human," she says. "Who will come to save you?"

Ben, meanwhile, has been edging very carefully closer to the trap, where Jesse is still half-collapsed against empty air with his eyes squeezed shut. Ben can't break the lines drawn a floor above, but maybe he can snap Jesse out of his nightmare, at least reassure him that they're here. The muttering starts again and Ben squints, trying to hear him.

"March twenty-ninth," Jesse whispers. "March...twenty-ninth, March twenty-ninth, March—"

"Did I say you could approach?" the alpha's voice rings out. Ben freezes, and she raises a hand twined in blue.

Dean's knife hits her in the shoulderblade. A pulse of fire runs along her tattoos, scorching the air around her, but when the alpha turns around there's no sign that it hurt her at all. "Winchester," she growls, something ancient and deep below the words.

"Oh good, you've heard of me," Dean sneers. "Then maybe you know what happens to things that mess with my family."

She draws herself yet taller, still glowing ferociously. "You have slaughtered dozens of my children who never touched a hair on your head."

"Well, what can I say, gankin' uglies is part of the job description." Now knifeless, Dean pulls his gun and points it at her. "You wanna dance, let's tango."

The alpha's lip curls—but then she stops, and looks back at Jesse. Ben begins to get a very bad feeling about this.

"I have something better in mind for you," she says. She takes Jesse's chin and tips his head backward, ignoring the way he shakes and tries to jerk free. Fire spins up her arm and then up through Jesse's skin, burrowing into his eyes no matter how tightly he tries to keep them shut. Jesse screams, and more fire makes its way into his open mouth.

"Stop it!" Ben yells, and against every rule Dean's ever taught him, he lunges into the devil's trap himself and tries to rip the alpha's hand away. His fingertips barely touch skin before she throws him to the floor with her other arm. At once Claire's there beside him, shielding Ben's body with her own as he struggles back to his feet, and she shouts something in the First's own language that sounds less like magic and more like a plea.

"You killed my children," the alpha says again. "I do not tolerate threats. Now _you_ will know what it means to be hunted."

She lets go of Jesse, and he collapses to the floor. She pulls the tube from his neck and tucks the full bag of cambion blood under one arm. Then she stretches up, impossibly tall, and a whip of fire cracks the ceiling in two. The First wraps herself in a cloud of smoke, and then she's gone.

"Jesse?" Ben starts forward to help him up, to check for a _pulse_ , but Dean holds him back. A clap of thunder shakes the house to its foundations.

Jesse opens his eyes, and they've gone jet black.

Claire smothers a noise. Jesse gets to his feet, then moves slowly past the edge of the trap, head cocked to one side at the lack of resistance. The black of his eyes makes it impossible to track his gaze as he takes in the rest of the room.

"We're between him and the exits," Ben says, barely a whisper, eyes never leaving Jesse for a second. Jesse hates not having a clear path to the door, but they can't risk him bolting, not in this state—and what if Jesse remembers he doesn't need a door at all? _D'you know how easy it would be to make it like I never existed?_ At a normal volume he says, "Jesse, it's us," but there's no way to tell if his voice has sparked any recognition in those glittering black eyes.

"You're in Cicero, Indiana," Claire says, even and unthreatening, though Ben sees the tremor in her hands. "No one wants to hurt you. You're safe."

Jesse laughs, and the sharp sound gives Ben chills. "Safe," he mocks. In a singsong he adds, "Just need to ask you some questions..." He runs his fingers around his unencumbered wrists, frowning slightly as he stares down at them.

"Jesse," Ben says, trying to think of anything that will pull Jesse back to reality. "Hey, look around. How many people are in this room?"

Jesse flinches. "Alice," he says. "Ross, Hal, Lauren, Tory—"

"No," Ben interrupts, trying to channel Claire, be patient but firm. "This room right now, how many people are there? Look at me."

Jesse's empty black eyes dart away from Ben's. "Oliver."

"I am _not_ Oliver," Ben says, and then has to pause for breath before he starts to cry.

Claire picks up where he left off. "I'm Claire," she says to Jesse. "The first time I met you, I fell through the floor. I would probably have broken a bone if you hadn't been there to catch me. Do you remember that?"

Jesse shakes his head, but he's frowning, and after a moment he looks up at the burnt crack on the ceiling. "You broke it," he mumbles, half a question.

"You're not trapped," she agrees. "You're not in Australia anymore, and we're not going to hurt you, all right?"

"Does he even recognize you?" Dean mutters, but too loudly—Jesse flinches like a startled cat and bares his teeth.

"You shouldn't have come back." From the Antichrist, such a warning feels like prophecy.

Ben lets out a breath, very carefully. "Course we came back. We weren't gonna leave you like that."

"You shouldn't have come back," Jesse repeats, as his gaze seems to find the writing on the wall. The puddle of lamb's blood has spread far enough to seep under his boots. "I know how this ends."

"It doesn't need to," Claire says, her voice almost hypnotizing. "You can control it, Jesse, remember?"

"I can't—" He takes a few steps backward, then looks up at the ceiling, at the scorch mark the alpha left when she broke him free. "This isn't right." More thunder rumbles overhead.

Dean takes a step forward, still holding his crossbow. "Maybe if we—"

" _Do not touch me_ ," Jesse commands, and the blood-sodden carpet beneath his feet ignites.

"Whoa, hey," says Dean, holding up his hands, but Jesse stretches out his arm and the flame leaps up into his waiting hold. He curls his fingers around it, possessive, while outside a wind buffets the windows, trying to get in.

"Jesse," Ben says, trying not to sound like he's panicking. He doesn't know what to _say_. The howling sound of the wind reminds him of being trapped in Sioux Falls, besieged by demons because Jesse wanted anything but to become one of them.

"Doesn't matter anyway, does it?" says Jesse. The whole room smells of sulfur. "Already know what I am. What I do." He shows his teeth. "Go ahead."

Ben spreads his empty hands and keeps his eyes on Jesse's face, not the fire still jumping in his grasp. "We're not here to do anything to you, all right?" He glances at Dean, who—reluctantly—also puts his hands in the air. "This isn't Australia. It's different this time."

"It's _never_ different!" Jesse yells. The flame he's holding plumes upward, doubling in size, but Jesse seems not to even feel the burst of heat. "I told you I can't stop it, I told you to leave me _alone_ —"

"You can," Claire orders over the storm's crescendo. "You _can_ stop it, Jesse, you can control yourself, just _focus_." A crash of thunder punctuates her words, and Jesse covers his ears.

Defying every hunter's instinct he ever had, Ben moves closer. "Jesse—"

Lightning flashes, and Jesse's head whips up. " _Back. Off._ "

The command sends Ben stumbling backwards. He's only heard that tone once before, but it's not a feeling he could forget: Jesse's voice, magnified so much stronger than physical sound alone, reverberating through Ben's bones until his body has no choice but to obey. In his memory the truck skids to a halt, the hellhounds draw closer, and Ben is frozen unable to move.

"I can't do it," Jesse says in a hollow voice. "No matter how hard I try, I'm always going to end up like this. I'm never going to be safe." He looks up with his coal-black eyes. "You will never be safe from me. So stop trying."

Through enormous effort of will, Ben wrenches himself one step forward. "It's like," he pants, "like you've never even met me." He takes another step.

"Stop it!" Jesse cries. There's no demonic force behind the words, but the way his voice cracks is almost as bad. "I can't, I _can't_ , I can't be what you want me to be!"

"You already are!" Ben shouts.

Abruptly his body stops fighting him. Ben covers the rest of the ground in three huge steps and grabs Jesse's face roughly with both hands.

"We already do want you," he says in a rush. "Right now, just how you are, with us. We want you _here_ , Jesse." He swallows and brushes a tiny circle across Jesse's cheekbone. "So come on back, okay?"

The black in Jesse's eyes flickers, and then his whole face screws up and his eyelids slam shut. "Ben," he says, the first acknowledgement that he knows who he's talking to. He chokes. "You have to leave, I'm going to kill you, I won't be able to stop it—"

"You're not gonna kill me," Ben says. "Know how I know?"

Jesse shakes his head, face burrowing further into Ben's palms.

"Because you need someone to make you look good at hackeysack."

Jesse's incredulous laugh startles his eyes open, and at long last Ben sees the hazel he's been waiting for. Ben grins, a little shaky. Jesse laughs again and keeps laughing until the sound turns to harsh gasps. He drops his forehead onto Ben's shoulder, breath still hitching wetly, and digs his fingers into the back of Ben's shirt. Above them, the storm finally turns from lightning to rain; his fires have all flickered out.

"Christ, I can't believe you," Jesse coughs when he finally manages words. "I can't even believe you're real."

"That's what they all say," Ben replies airily. His hands are not keen to let Jesse pull away, and if Claire and Dean weren't here Ben would probably kiss him. He gives it some serious thought anyway.

"Are your hallucinations gone?" Claire asks presently, when Jesse has finished wiping his eyes and begun to look around Marie's living room like he's never seen it before.

Jesse shakes his head, eyes squeezed shut tight. "Yeah, it—yeah." His throat bobs when he swallows. "It wears off quick. She had to keep dosing me to keep me under. But I know where I am now."

"Good." Claire struggles a moment then adds, "I knew you wouldn't hurt anyone. I knew you could do it."

A pleased little smile finds its way onto Jesse's face. Claire just nods at him, but there’s the slightest hint of color to her cheeks.

Dean clears his throat and says, "Hey. Jesse."

Jesse twitches, but no fire sparks from his hands and his eyes stay clear. Dean lifts his hands palm-out, and Ben realizes this is the first time he's ever heard Dean call Jesse by name.

"Think I owe you an apology," Dean says.

"No shit," Claire mutters. Ben gives his head a little shake to be sure he heard that correctly. Jesse just looks Dean over, clenching his jaw.

"Does that mean you're going to let me walk away from this?"

"Means I was wrong about you," Dean says. With one hand he grips the back of the couch, letting the furniture take the weight from his injured leg. "Look, when you were a kid, you were supposed to wipe out the armies of Heaven. Last time I saw you, you'd just ripped open Purgatory. So when I come here and you say your cannon's loose, I figured even if you were a good guy it was a matter of time before something went apocalyptic."

"Dean," Ben warns, shifting in front of Jesse, but Dean shakes his head.

"Ben told me what happened to you. Those hunters, that who you were seeing just now?"

Jesse jerks one shoulder. "Worse the first time around."

Dean glances at Ben, then looks at the burn mark on the ceiling. "Torture does stuff to you," he says roughly. "Brings out sides of yourself that you don't wanna see." He clears his throat. "Most people, they start thinking they're back with the same sons of bitches that cut them up the first time, they'd wipe 'em out and ask questions later. And you could've torched us a hundred times just now. But you didn't."

"Yes, exactly, he didn't," Claire says, but Jesse speaks over her.

"What are you saying?"

Dean looks at both of them. "I'm saying you can handle yourself just fine, all right?” He shakes his head. “You got more control than I gave you credit for, and I—" It’s clear the words are a struggle, but Dean gets them out. "I shouldn't've trapped you like that, alpha or no alpha. I was outta line. All that crap you went through, whatever you had to do to get out—it wasn't your fault."

“That’s exactly what I said,” Ben puts in. Dean gives him a rueful smile.

“You too, kid.” He rubs the stubble on one side of his face. “You’ve got good instincts, and I should’ve trusted them. Not saying I’m thrilled at how much trouble seems to find you these days, but with this one—” He gestures at Jesse, who still looks like he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. Dean shrugs. “This one, you made the right call.”

There’s a long beat in which no one will meet anyone else’s eyes. Finally Jesse straightens, and looks around again as though remembering something. “Is your aunt okay?”

“She’s waiting outside in the car right now,” Ben affirms. “Is it—can I tell her to come in? Are _you_ okay? _”_

"Ah, well—you know me." There's a tired warmth in the look Jesse's giving Ben, and his reply isn't as bitter as it could be. "I'll live."


	6. Epilogue

The scorch mark is gone.

Ben peers up at the ceiling above the couch, but it’s daylight now and the results are unambiguous: where the alpha had broken through Jesse’s trap last night is now smooth, unmarred plaster.

Was it Dean? He’d mentioned something about spackle as they all retired to their beds, reminding Ben how he used to build houses once, back when they were all pretending to be a normal family. But Dean and Marie went out to buy groceries soon after breakfast, and this repair is too seamless for an ordinary patch job. Ben looks over the rest of the ceiling, in case he somehow mistook the burn’s placement. The entire expanse above him remains clean and white. As he turns he notices that the far wall, too, has been scrubbed of its carved threat. Marie’s entire living room looks as pristine as he’s ever seen it, and for a moment Ben has the horrible thought that he’s trapped in another dream.

Then he looks down, and sees that the carpet is still stained with blood.

Not a dream, then. Someone just wiped away last night’s scars as though they never were— _like healing a wound_ , Ben thinks, and then of course he knows exactly who it was.

It takes him a minute of searching inside the house before he spots the figure slouched against the gray shed in the backyard. As ever, it appears Jesse feels safest with the open sky above him. Ben toes into his sneakers and goes out into the summer morning.

Jesse plucks the cigarette from his mouth as soon as he hears someone coming, then sees who it is and slowly lets out a smoky breath. Ben leans against the clapboards next to him and says, "So someone fixed the ceiling."

Jesse spins the lit cigarette so ash flutters off into the mud at their feet. "I figured your aunt's pissed enough at me already without adding property damage to the list."

"You know, she's really not," Ben says, but Jesse keeps talking.

"I tried to fix all of it. I wanted to. It's just, it took me so many tries just to get those scratches out of the wall, and then I had to put the trap back together—"

"The ceiling's still a trap?" Ben asks, alarmed—what would happen if Jesse got caught again?

Jesse shakes his head. "Claire wiped it away. It was only chalk." He takes another long drag and lets it out.

Ben thinks of the little stub Dean keeps in one pocket at all times. Dean apologized last night, and well he should have, but Jesse's a better person than Ben to have actually forgiven him. "How you feeling now?"

"I'm fine," Jesse says. "I'm not gonna lose it again, I promise."

Ben huffs. "Not why I asked." After a moment's hesitation, he leans his shoulder against Jesse's. "You wanna talk about it?"

Jesse looks sideways at him. "Talk about what?"

Ben shifts away—probably still too soon for casual touching; Jesse's got every right to want a little personal space. "This," Ben says. "What happened. What happens now."

"What _does_ happen now?" says Jesse, smoke lacing his words. "Cause clearly I'm still not good enough at controlling myself, and if you—if you and Claire don't want to risk it any longer, I'd understand."

Ben huffs. “Jesse, anyone else in your situation would have left this house a smoking crater. Do you even understand how strong you are to stop yourself from destroying things every single day?”

“You called me,” he counters. “You needed my help and I didn’t come. You can’t rely on me.”

“Are you kidding me right now?” says Ben. “Dude, _you_ should have been calling _us_ as soon as you figured out you were in a trap.” He frowns. “Come to think of it, why didn’t you?”

Jesse looks down, flicking nonexistent ash from the tip of his cigarette. After a while he looks up, as though checking to see if Ben will let him get away with silence, but Ben just raises his eyebrows at him. Finally Jesse shrugs. “I thought it was dumb, okay? It wasn’t even hurting me, it’s just a stupid _trap_ , I should’ve been able to—” He sucks in more smoke, short and sharp. “I just stood there waffling about it like a fuckin’ idiot for an age and a half. When the alpha showed up she threw my phone where I couldn’t reach, and then I was too busy nearly burning your aunt’s house down to think about it.”

“You should always call,” Ben says. “Anything hurts you, you should say so, even if you think it’s stupid. We could’ve let you out and then none of this would’ve happened.”

Jesse kicks the ground. “Sorry I can’t handle my shit, I guess.”

"That's _not_ —" Ben starts, then takes a breath. It hasn't done any good the last hundred times he's told Jesse that this isn't his fault; perhaps Ben needs to try a different tack. "Look. Were you mad at me for what I said when Brigitta dosed me up?"

"Mad?" Jesse blinks. "No."

"Exactly, because I was tripping balls," Ben says. He nudges Jesse's shoulder again. "So how could I be mad at you for what you did when _you_ got whammied?"

Jesse sucks the last sparks out of his cigarette and tosses the butt aside. "Yeah, but you didn't nearly kill anyone, did you?"

"Hey, last I checked, everybody who walked into that room walked back out of it."

"Only because you and Claire stopped me."

Ben turns so he and Jesse are facing each other, his heart thumping. "Look at me."

Jesse sets his jaw and stares back at Ben, but his stubbornness doesn't last very long and his gaze soon drops. Ben waits patiently until he chances another look.

"Wasn't us that stopped you," he says. "Not really. We could've talked until our throats gave out, but it still wouldn't have made any difference if you hadn't wanted to stop yourself. And you did."

"Barely," Jesse rasps. "I was so angry, Ben, if that had gone just a little bit the other way—"

"You fought it. When push came to shove, you kept yourself from hurting anyone. Just like we knew you would." Ben reaches up to cup Jesse's cheek in one hand, an undeniable gesture. "You're a good person, Jesse."

Jesse shakes his head against Ben's palm. Even when he won't make eye contact, Ben can tell his eyes are hazel.

"You are," he says, even quieter. "You're good.” And again: “You're good." When Jesse lets out a breath, clear of smoke this time, Ben asks: "Can I kiss you?"

That makes him look up at last. "You still want to?"

" _Yes_ ," Ben says fiercely, and before he can finish the word Jesse yanks him forward by the shirt front and kisses him on the mouth.

Ben eagerly takes advantage of what may be his only chance to tug Jesse's bottom lip between his teeth, running his fingers up Jesse's ribs at the same time. Jesse's mouth goes slack and Ben slips his tongue inside, expects for a split second to taste sulfur, but he tastes like nothing: just warmth and slick and the last hints of tobacco smoke. He presses his thumbs to the hinge of Jesse’s jaw and loses quite a bit of time trying to memorize the ridges on the roof of his mouth. Ben wants to touch every inch of Jesse he can reach, and this time, like a miracle, Jesse touches him back.

When their hips slot together, seemingly of their own accord, Jesse pulls away with a breathy little noise. "Not complaining or anything," he says, "but maybe slow down when we're out in the open, yeah?"

Ben's eyes cut over to the house, which would offer a perfectly clear view of them to anyone in the kitchen who cared to look. He turns back to Jesse, and sees the same thought cross his mind: they can't let Claire find out like this.

"I'm gonna tell her," Ben says, still quiet, still close. "She's—she deserves to know, right?"

"Right. Yeah." Jesse lets go of him, his fingers dragging a little across Ben's bare neck, making him shiver in spite of everything. He hesitates for a moment, then says, "Should I—would it help if I was—"

"Think I'd better go myself, first," says Ben. Jesse nods and looks at the ground. "But I'll be back soon, all right?"

Jesse casts another glance at the house. "Well, I won't wait up." He pulls out another cigarette.

Ben leans up and pecks him on the cheek, earning a surprised half-smile. "Don't worry," he orders, and sets off back to the house, hoping he doesn’t look too flushed.

He gets back inside to find Claire back to scrubbing the carpet. "Katie’s been texting you," Claire informs him, only briefly glancing up from her work. "About Marie. You left your phone upstairs." She grinds liquid into the carpet a little harder with a cloth that's slowly turning pink, then deliberately lets out a breath. "How's Jesse?"

"He's coming around," Ben chooses, though he doesn't specify to what. This is going to be harder than he thought. He sits down on the couch, close but not too close to where Claire is working. "So, uh—" At the last minute his nerve fails him. "You know, you don't have to clean that up yourself."

"My mom hated it when we left stains on the carpet," Claire says. It's maybe the fifth time ever that Ben can remember Claire mentioning her mother in all the years they've been together, and something in her movements broadcasts a warning loud and clear that now is not the time for a talk. But if not now, when? Ben knows how easy it is to make a habit of silence. He steels himself.

"Claire," he says quietly, and she looks up. "Can we talk a minute?"

After a beat Claire wipes off her hands and stands up. "About?"

Ben was feeling pretty good about his ability to make important speeches after he managed to talk Jesse down, but that confidence has completely abandoned him now. He takes a deep breath and forces himself to make eye contact. "I know you don't like talking about it," he begins, but that's not a good place to start; why is this so difficult?

Claire waits for him, frowning as long seconds tick by, and then something in Ben's face makes her blanch. "He _told_ you."

"What?" says Ben, trying to imagine what she thinks Jesse said about her, but Claire just swears.

"That son of a _bitch_. He knows what's happening to me, doesn't he? What did he say?"

Ben has completely lost the thread of this conversation and it hasn't even started yet. "Claire, who are you _talking_ about?"

She shuts her mouth abruptly. Then, stubborn even in uncertainty, she says. "Castiel. He was here earlier. Weren't you with him?"

"What? I mean, yes, but he didn't talk to me, that's not what I wanted to—" Belatedly, her words catch up with him. "What do you mean, what's happening to you?"

Claire turns away, but not so quickly that Ben misses the flash of panic crossing her face. "My mistake, then," she says, but this isn't embarrassment, it's actual fear, and everything else completely flees Ben's mind.

"Claire. What's happening to you?"

She presses a fist against her sternum and doesn't answer, but Ben gets a glimmer of understanding: Castiel. Her grace. The strange way her reactions have amplified whenever someone tells a lie. What if she's getting worse?

"Claire?"

"Look, there's a reason I didn't say anything, okay?" she says, hugging herself. "I just want to keep going like normal, for however—for now."

"For however long until what?" Ben moves in front of her so she has to stay. She doesn't answer. He knows better than to touch her but he grabs her arm anyway, needing to feel something solid. "We said no passes on the stuff that might kill us, Claire, how long until _what_?"

She clenches her jaw mutinously and pulls out of his grip, then gives up all at once. "Not _us_ ," she says softly, staring at the ground. "Just me."

It takes Ben a second to understand. Then the whole world seems to tilt under his feet, and he finds he can't move a muscle.

"It started after Purgatory," Claire says, in the same detached voice she'd use to talk about a case. "My sigils broke, remember, and I was bleeding a lot, and then I think—I guess Castiel must have healed me. I don't know why." She drags her fingernails along her jeans. "He knocked something loose. The grace, everything that comes with it, it's been getting worse."

What Ben remembers is how heavy Claire had felt as he held her up on bleeding legs, and how pale and slack her face had become by the time Jesse finally closed Purgatory's gate. It was defending _Ben_ that she got hurt in the first place—and it was Ben, afterward, who demanded that Castiel heal her. "What does that mean?" he asks, hoarse.

Claire shrugs stiffly. "I talked to Ben Collins," she says. "Haley's little brother. He helped Emily, after Meg; apparently he knows something about damaged souls."

"But you're not," Ben says, and that gets Claire to look up.

"I am," she says. "And I'm not getting better."

"How can you just stand there and be _calm_ about this?" Ben demands, pacing from one side of the rug to the other. "We have to do something, we have to find a way to reverse it. You've been living with that grace for ages!"

"And who knows how much longer I'd have gotten, even without this acceleration," Claire points out. "This isn't coming from the last two months, it's coming from the last ten years. Humans aren't made to hold anything more than their own soul; vessels get cracks." She smiles, bitter. "How's that for some fine print?"

His rage on her behalf makes up Ben's mind. "I'm calling Castiel."

"Don't you dare," she says, grabbing his wrist, but Ben struggles away.

"This isn't a crossroads deal come due! You didn't know this would happen, he can't just leave you like this on top of everything else—"

"Listen!" Claire snaps. "The last time Castiel touched me he made everything exponentially _worse_ , do you really think I trust him to undo it all?"

"What else are you going to do, Claire?" Ben demands. "Because I am not just gonna sit here and _watch you die_!"

"What?"

They both turn. Jesse stands in the kitchen doorway, gripping the frame like he's about to fall down.

And of course Ben has completely lost track of his original mission in coming here, but he's not going to derail them now; this is too important. "Did you know about this?" he demands, gesturing at Claire. "Her grace, it's _killing_ her, she didn't even—" He turns back to Claire. "Why didn't you tell us?"

"Yes, so far this revelation has gone swimmingly, whyever would I want to put it off?" Claire bites out. "There's _nothing you can do_ , Ben."

Jesse steps into the room with them, and his earlier slouch has disappeared. "There's not much I can't do," he says. The unbroken ceiling over his head is testament to that fact.

Claire looks up at him, bleak. "It's grace, Jesse. You're the Antichrist. It doesn't want you to touch it."

"This is why you always feel like you've got a fever, isn't it?" Jesse says. "That's why your headaches are getting worse."

"And you've tried to heal me," Claire counters, "and it's zapped you away every time. How much worse will it be if you're fighting it on purpose? For all we know, tearing it out will kill me faster than letting it rot in there." She lays her palm flat across her collarbone and presses down.

"You still should've said," says Ben, but Claire straightens her shoulders and lets her hand drop.

"What good would it have done?" she says. "Why is this better? The situation is exactly the same, except now it's all three of us freaking out. We've got plenty to worry about with the things we _can_ fix—I didn't see the point in adding the stress of something we can't!"

Before Ben can respond, Jesse speaks. "I can't change what I am either," he says, his voice low. "Still rather have people to help bear it, though."

Claire darts a glance at Ben and chews her bottom lip. "I just don't want things to change," she says, quieter still. "I like the way things are now. I want it to stay like this. But now you're going to start acting like I'll _break_ —"

"We won't," says Ben, even though a minute ago he was looking for signs she was about to drop dead on the spot. He wants very badly to trust that Claire won't let this destroy her, not when she's always fought tooth and nail against anyone else's idea of fate, but he needs to be sure. "Will you keep looking, though? Will you let us help?"

She takes a deep breath. "On one condition." She makes eye contact with each of them in turn. "Whatever we find, or don't find, or you think I should try, I'm the one who gets to make the final call. And if I decide something's not worth it, you have to live with that, because it's still my body and I have had _enough_ of people doing whatever they think is best to it. All right?"

"All right," Ben says, "but." He takes a step closer. He's never known how to say this, but that's not going to stop him trying. "You remember that wendigo hunt in Wisconsin, about a year after we met?"

Claire looks up at him, then away; that's one of the ones they don't talk about. "Why?"

"I was going to die." Ben has no illusions about this: if he'd gone on that hunt by himself, he wouldn't be standing here now. "But you wouldn't let me. You dragged me down that mountain yourself, in the dark, and you were swearing at me the whole time because you didn't even really  _like_ me then but you still stayed. That's when I knew." Ben clears his throat and doesn't say the word _love_ —Jesse's listening, after all, and anyway that's not the point. "So that's my condition, okay? Just stay with me."

"Ben, you can't ask me that," says Claire, barely audible, and it's almost like they're having the conversation he came here to have in the first place.

"I'm not asking for anything else," he says carefully. "Be sad, be angry, whatever. But you gotta believe there's a way out of this, all right? I’ll find you a way out if it’s the last thing I do, so—don't die. That's your job. Just don't die."

There's a pointed silence, and Ben wishes that for once, just for _once_ , Claire would put aside technicalities and promise him what he needs to hear.

She looks down, and for a second her eyes shine overfull. Then she sniffs, mouth quirking, and it's like the tears never were. "You'd get yourselves in trouble the minute I was gone, anyway."

"Be a shame to waste our God-given talent for it," Jesse says, and Ben laughs aloud, more than a little watery himself.

The door opens then, and Dean's noisy entrance breaks the tension before Ben can embarrass them all with a group hug. "Yo, birthday boy," Dean calls, hefting a plastic grocery bag. "Get over here."

Ben perks up—in all the excitement he'd completely forgotten the date. Dean starts unpacking to reveal a vast, slightly-dented sheet cake with _HAPPY BIRTHDAY_ looped in frosting across the top and a sticky blue shape in one corner that was probably once a car. It is clearly a cake for a six-year-old.

"The other option was clowns," Dean says at the look Ben gives him. "Why they couldn't have picked a self-respecting car—"

"No, it's—it's pretty awesome," Ben snickers. Jesse drifts closer to stare at the cake over Ben's shoulder, eyes wide, and Ben wonders when he last saw an ordinary kid's birthday cake like this.

"Can't rent a moonbounce in this town for love or money, either," Dean adds. "Not that you're small enough to have one. I mean, not that you _couldn't_ have one, if you wanted, but I think those things have a size limit. Whatever, you know what I mean." He rubs his hands together. "Man, I remember the first time I ever met you, you told me chicks dig moonbounces. Little eight-year-old kid laying down the moves."

Claire raises one eyebrow at him across the table. "What?" says Ben, embarrassed but mostly laughing. "I was _born_ with game, okay. Irresistible."

"That explains it," Jesse says beside him, so low only Ben can hear, but it makes his cheeks turn hot for another reason.

He's saved from replying by Marie, who appears in the doorway her her own arms full of plastic bags. "We brought chicken wings!" she says. "And ice cream. And potato chips. And—well. It’s been awhile since this house was full of hungry teenagers, but we should have enough to last us an hour or two, at least." She drops the bags on the table.

"Not a teenager anymore," Dean says, slinging an arm around Ben from the side opposite Jesse. Jesse edges out of reach. "It's the big two-oh! Soon he'll be drinking, and then what'll we do?"

"Yes, soon," Marie quips, sounding exactly like her sister. "Hang on, I've got some candles in the cupboard." She reappears a few minutes later with four thin waxy sticks, and places them around the corners of the cake. "Four candles times five people equals twenty," she announces, "and that will have to be good enough."

"I'll do the honors." Dean brings out his Zippo and lights them up. "I'd say make a wish, but—"

"I think we’re all kind of burnt out on wishes," Ben says. And as he looks around the room, seeing so many people he loves lit by the shared glow of the candles, he doesn't know what more he could wish for anyway.

"Next year in Jerusalem," he declares instead, and meets Marie's exasperated "that's Passover, Ben," with a sloppy kiss to her cheek.

“Go on, then," says Jesse, nodding at the cake.

Claire’s mouth twitches. "And many more."

 _And many more_ , Ben thinks, and blows the candles out.

**Author's Note:**

> We've said before that _Only Human_ is one of the most challenging things we've ever written, and that goes doubly for the redux. Along with improving the pacing and characterization, ironing out plot inconsistencies, and changing plot points we no longer cared for (letting Brigitta die would just defy every moral of the story; Ian's new depth was also an unexpected surprise), we also had to get all the proper plotlines in place for _Envesseled_ —that was, after all, the original purpose of Project Redux. Over a year of really hard work went into rewriting this fic, and it is immensely rewarding to see it posted at last. We hope you enjoyed reading it as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you. You guys are awesome, and thank you as always for sticking with us!
> 
>  **For more of this verse, check out[cambionverse](cambionverse.tumblr.com) on Tumblr**.


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